


so what if you don't see the shore

by laallomri



Series: season 5 au [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Rating for Language, also for Vaguely Inappropriate Jokes, broganes, klance, season 5, the universe works hard but kogane works harder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14743124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laallomri/pseuds/laallomri
Summary: "You should really stop doing this," Keith says. "Kolivan's gonna get mad if you keep sneaking in here.""Babe," Lance says. "If Kolivan tries to keep me from visiting you I will face god and walk backwards into hell."Keith squints at him."Vine?" he says tentatively.Lance sighs. "Twitter," he corrects, shaking his head. "I can't believe I'm dating someone who doesn't recognize memes."In which Keith reconciles with his mama, realizes something is wrong with his brother, and really really loves his boyfriend.





	so what if you don't see the shore

**Author's Note:**

> as usual I’ve changed lance’s eye color to brown because I, unlike the voltron designers, am an intellectual
> 
> you don’t really have to read part 1 to understand this; all you need to know is 1. lance and keith get together between zarkon’s death and the kral vera; 2. madat is a blade member who is keith’s friend and helped lance sneak in to visit him; 3. during that sneak-in visit lance gave keith a tablet so he can call everyone on the castle ship, plus a love letter that keith keeps in his pocket for good luck; 4. keith is a huge loser who loves romance novels
> 
> thx to @stereostars and @leggylance and @akirakogane for putting up with me messaging them about this, you all are the real mvps. also [this](https://twitter.com/queenromelle/status/998653151979999232) tweet by @queenromelle for inspiration for one of the flirty lines keith says
> 
> warnings: mention of thoughts of suicide (by an adult). if you want to read this and just skip that part, skip from ‘“I think about my mama every day,’ Shiro goes on” to the next line break
> 
> title is from Haule Haule, a song in the movie Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

Keith has one memory of his mama.  
  
He’s three years old, and he’s sitting on a rug in the center of a small room. He’s holding a car in his hand—or maybe it’s a truck, he doesn’t know for sure—and he’s sliding it across the rug, making _zoom_ noises with his mouth. His mama is standing a foot or two away, in front of a dresser, fiddling with something on it. After a few seconds she steps over to him and picks him up.  
  
She says something, though he doesn’t know what, doesn’t know the cadence of her voice, doesn’t even know what language she says it in, doesn’t know if she over-emphasizes her r or drawls her i or slurs over her s. He just knows that she says something, and he touches her cheek, and says _pretty_ , and she laughs, a silent laugh in a silent memory. Then she shakes her head, and he reaches out to touch something else, something sparkly dangling from her ears—earrings, probably, though he doesn’t remember what they look like, or what color they are, or how they must have caught the sunlight filtering in through the window.  
  
He doesn’t remember her words, or her laugh, or the color of her earrings; doesn’t remember her face, or her hands, or the sound of her voice; doesn’t remember anything but that she once held him close, and he once made her laugh, and despite this she left him anyway.

.^.  
  
It’s the day after the Kral Vera, two days after Lance snuck into the Blade of Marmora’s base and stole Keith’s sadness out of him and turned it into something soft instead. Keith is lying on his side on his stiff tiny bunk, smiling dopily into a tablet propped up on the wall.  
  
( _so fucking dopey,_ says a part of his mind, one that used to be angry but increasingly just gives him affectionate eye rolls and fond self-deprecations. _it’s bad enough that you like romance novels, do you have to act like you’re in one now, too_?)  
  
( _yes_ , says another part of his mind, without hesitation. _that’s what boyfriends are for. they’re for acting dumb and dopey around._ )  
  
“I miss you,” Lance says through the screen. He’s lying down too—Keith can see a bit of his bedroom behind him—and he has a dopey smile on his face to match Keith’s own. “It’s so boring here without you. I have no one to kiss or make fun of.”  
  
“Can’t you make fun of someone else?” Keith asks. “You have Lotor, don’t you?”  
  
Lance makes a face. “That’s not the same thing,” he says. “I don’t make fun of Lotor, I verbally destroy him with my quick wit and devastating roasts.”  
  
“Sure,” Keith says, because boyfriends are also for being supportive no matter what.  
  
“I make fun of you so I won’t be overwhelmed by how stupidly pretty your face is,” Lance goes on. “I’m like”—he bugs his eyes out—“ ‘holy shit, Keith’s eyes are gorgeous.’” His eyes go back to normal. “But then I’m like”—his voice turns nasally, his words more of a squawk than anything else—“ ‘holy shit, Keith’s got a mullet, look how dumb it is, what a loser.’”  
  
“It is not a mullet,” Keith protests. “It’s not dumb.”  
  
“Sure,” Lance says, and Keith narrows his eyes, because he’s doing the _boyfriend who has to be supportive no matter what voice._ “Doesn’t it get in the way, though? I don’t get why you don’t tie it up. It’s all in your eyes, it’ll ruin your vision.”  
  
“Okay, _mom_ ,” Keith says, and Lance snickers. “I tie it up sometimes. I just don’t have anything to tie it up with right now.”  
  
“Madat might have ribbons or hair ties in her illegal space mall store,” Lance says. “Maybe ask her? And then next time we talk you can have your hair tied up and I’ll pass out cause of how hot you’ll look.” He pauses. “On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t do it. It might be a safety hazard.”  
  
“I think you’ll be fine,” Keith says, amused. “I feel like passing out every time I look at you but so far I’ve managed not to.”  
  
Lance’s ears turn violently red.  
  
“What—no—what—” he splutters, as Keith smirks. “I can’t believe Galra Keith is a flirtier boyfriend than I am.”  
  
“Maybe flirtier,” Keith says, then, because he really wants to see if the rest of Lance’s face can turn as red as his ears, “but not hotter.”  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” Lance says, and sure enough his blush starts to spreads over the rest of his face as well. “Oh my god.”  
  
Keith chuckles.  
  
“This is a totally legitimate question and definitely not me changing the subject so I don’t blush to death,” Lance says next, “but are you okay? You were at the Kral Vera, right?”  
  
Keith’s amusement vanishes.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “We had a mission there—I can’t say much about it, sorry—but then Shiro showed up and I had to de-defuse”—he stumbles, catches himself a split second too late—“I had to undo everything.”  
  
There is a pause, too long to be natural, the word _defuse_ hanging in the air between them, too loud and too quiet at the same time.  
  
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Lance says finally.  
  
“Me too,” Keith says. He wants it to sound cheeky but instead it sounds relieved. A thought pops into his head, and instinctively he starts to ignore it, but he remembers who he’s talking to, how he can tell him anything, so he says, “It was really close for a second, I didn’t know if I’d—you know.” He takes a breath. “And then it turned into a free-for-all and I was already really tired and it was hard to—”  
  
He breaks off, uncertain what he wants to say.  
  
“To fight a bunch of grown-ass Galra?” Lance finishes dryly. He shifts position, tucking an arm under his head to prop himself up. “Do you think these people ever feel bad about fighting teenagers? Or does it just offend them that we beat them anyway?”  
  
Keith shrugs.  
  
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Lance says again. “I mean, obviously I knew you’d beat the crap out of everyone cause you’re a badass ninja samurai—”  
  
Keith snorts. Lance grins briefly before continuing.  
  
“—but I still worry about you.”  
  
“I worry about you too,” Keith says, and he feels weirdly warm saying it, like he’s said something embarrassing.  
  
“Aw, babe,” Lance says, grinning again. “You care about me.”  
  
“Shut up,” Keith mutters.  
  
“What’s wrong, _babe_?” Lance says, his grin widening. “Are you _shy_? Are you _blushing_?”  
  
“No,” Keith says, while very clearly blushing.  
  
“You know I can see you, right?” Lance says. “You and your tomato face can’t hide from me.”  
  
“Stop.”  
  
“First say I’m better at flirting than you.”  
  
Keith scowls. “Allura called Kolivan to tell him the Black Lion was there without the team’s agreement,” he begins.  
  
“Don’t change the subject just cause you’re losing!” Lance says, outraged. “That’s cheating!”  
  
“I let you change the subject earlier when you were embarrassed—” Keith points out, but Lance interrupts him.  
  
“But I was honest about it! I said I was changing the subject!”  
  
Keith ignores him. “—and what do you mean losing? This isn’t a competition.”  
  
“Everything is a competition,” Lance says firmly. “I’m winning at flirting—don’t make that face at me, it’s _true_ —and you’re winning at kissing, and we’re tied at overall boyfriend-ness.”  
  
For a second they just look at each other, Lance smug and Keith still scowling, and it occurs to Keith that bickering with Lance like this is a hundred thousand times better than actually bickering with him.  
  
“Fine,” he says. “You’re better than me at flirting— _for now_ ,” he adds, when Lance crows with triumph. “Can we move on?”  
  
“Yeah,” Lance says, sobering instantly. “So like Allura said, we had all said we weren’t going to help Lotor but Shiro took him to the Kral Vera anyway, cause he said he’s the leader and he’s in charge so his decision is final.”  
  
Keith frowns. “Shiro never talks like that.”  
  
“It’s what he said,” Lance says, and goes on to recount the conversation in more detail.  
  
“Weird,” Keith says, when he’s done.  
  
“Yeah,” Lance says again. “It’s not really his fault, though, I think he’s just stressed. I guess it makes sense that he’d act a little off.”  
  
“I guess,” Keith says, though there’s something unpleasant tugging in his gut. He files it away for later, then asks about everyone on the castle ship, and by the time Lance is done telling him about how really fucking white Pidge’s dad is (“He likes the Garrison peas,” Lance says despairingly. “The _Garrison peas_. When we go back to earth I’m taking the Holts straight to my house and my family will give them some real food.”) and about how Hunk spent yesterday reading a _very_ interesting book (“It was called _The Prince and his Guard_ ,” Lance says slyly, and terror seizes Keith’s heart. “It’s an Altean romance. Have you ever heard of it?” ; “No,” Keith says, cursing the heat creeping up his neck once more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” ; “HmmmMMMMmmmm,” Lance says, waggling his eyebrows), and about all the other shit the paladins and rebel fighters have got up to since they last spoke, the unpleasant feeling in Keith’s gut has faded, and he’s forgotten all about it.  
  
“Hey,” Lance says at length. “You should sleep. Don’t you have a mission soon?”  
  
Keith glances at the clock on the tablet.  
  
“Fuck, I do, in five vargas,” he says. “I’ll talk to you when I get back, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Lance says, then blows a kiss through the screen. “Good sort-of night.”  
  
“Good night,” Keith says, and closes his fist in front of the tablet.  
  
Lance blinks. “What are you doing?”  
  
“I’m catching your kiss,” Keith says.  
  
“Oh my _god_.” Lance covers his face with one hand, his ears turning bright red. “I can’t believe this.”  
  
Keith grins. “I guess I’m better at flirting after all, _Loverboy_ ,” he says.  
  
Lance groans, the sound muffled by his hand. He uncovers his face and Keith sees that again the blush has spread from his ears to his cheeks.  
  
“ _Anyway_ ,” Lance says, and Keith laughs, “you have to leave, and I have to go scream into a pillow for the next hour, so we should probably cut this call.”  
  
“Yeah, okay.”  
  
“Stay safe,” Lance says.  
  
“You too,” Keith replies, and the screen goes dark.  
  
He stares at it for a moment, his face warm and his heart content, then puts the tablet in the drawer by his bed and goes to sleep.

.^.  
  
The first time Keith sees Shiro, it’s in physics class, his very first day at the Garrison.  
  
Keith is sitting in the back row, trying to hide behind a stack of textbooks and notebooks so he won’t have to talk to anyone. It’s not that he dislikes people in general, but he doesn’t really know how to talk to them, and he knows his temper is legendarily quick, and he’d rather not start off his program by accidentally offending someone, or losing his temper over something dumb, or getting kicked out before he’s even started.  
  
Thanks to his supply tower he doesn’t really notice when the teacher walks in, only that the other students all straighten in their seats, a murmur of excitement running through the room. He peeks over his tower and blinks with surprise; he hadn’t looked at the name of the instructor, so he’d been expecting what every other one of his teachers in grade school had been: white, with a nose that wrinkles at the sight of a foreign face and a mouth that trips over the syllables of Akira Kogane.  
  
But this teacher is not white, and when he reads the roster to take attendance he smiles at every student just the same, and he says Akira Kogane the way Keith’s dad used to say it, years and years and years ago, before he went to get groceries and never came back, and Keith can’t stop staring, staring at this person who looks like him, the first instructor Keith has ever had who isn’t white.  
  
He checks his schedule, and reads _Physics I—Takashi Shirogane_ , and he feels a smile spread over his face, feels the rare thrill of seeing something related to his background in the usually white authority of a classroom.  
  
Takashi Shirogane—Shiro, as is written in blocky letters on the board—is saying something.  
  
“Akira Kogane?” he repeats. “Or Keith?”  
  
Keith snaps out of his daze. “Here,” he croaks, then clears his throat and says louder, waving a hand out from behind his supply tower so Shiro can see him, “Uh—here!”  
  
A kid to Keith’s left snickers. “Dude, why are you hiding behind all your shit?”  
  
Keith scowls at him, opens his mouth to say something—what exactly, he doesn’t know, but it’s not going to be nice—but Shiro beats him to it.  
  
“Not everyone is as comfortable with new situations as you are, Jacob,” he says, his voice kind but firm. “It’s a good habit to be accommodating of what people need to do to feel at ease. Speaking of which,” he says, with a curl of amusement, “Jacob has a habit of clicking his pens, so Akira, try not to strangle him when he does it.”  
  
A few kids laugh. Jacob blushes but otherwise doesn’t protest. Keith looks at Jacob, then at the stack of books at the front of his desk. Shiro goes on taking attendance, and by the time he’s gotten to Fatima Yusuf, Keith has made a gap in his stack of books.  
  
It’s Keith’s last class before lunch, so once it’s over he waits in the line of students who want to speak to Shiro. He lets everyone go ahead of him, too embarrassed to let anyone overhear what he wants to say. The girl in front of him asks approximately a hundred questions about some nerdy physics thing, then once she’s gone it’s just Keith and Shiro, who looks at him expectantly.  
  
“Um.” Keith shifts his weight, crosses his arms over his chest. “I—I just wanted to say—that I’ve never—that all my teachers have been white and it’s cool that you’re—not.”  
  
He cringes.  
  
“No—I meant—I’ve never had a teacher who looks like me and it’s cool. That you do. That you’re not—yeah.”  
  
His face burns; he uncrosses his arms, mutters, “Anyway, bye,” and is about to leave the classroom and keep going until he walks out of the Garrison and possibly the state altogether, but Shiro smiles and says, “Wait.”  
  
Keith waits.  
  
“I know how you feel,” Shiro says. “I didn’t have my first teacher of color until college and it sucked.”  
  
Keith doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just nods.  
  
“I run a couple organizations here,” Shiro says. “A Japanese Students’ Association and a more general Asian Students’ Association. Each will have their first meeting of the new year later this week, if you’d like to come see what it’s like.”  
  
The idea of being around so many new people at once is a little terrifying, but Keith doesn’t want to disappoint the only teacher who’s ever looked like him, so he says, “Okay. Maybe.”  
  
“You don’t have to talk to anyone,” Shiro adds, as if he’d read Keith’s mind. “Some people just come for the food.”  
  
Keith perks up. He’s only had two meals at the Garrison so far, dinner last evening when he’d moved in and breakfast this morning, and both were disgusting enough to make him consider dropping out before his first class. “There’s food?”  
  
Shiro smiles. “My mama always sends me a ton of food. When I told her about the organizations she started sending about a hundred boxes a month so I can feed everyone else, too.”  
  
Homecooked food. Food, cooked in someone’s home, by someone’s mother. There’s an ache somewhere in Keith’s chest.  
  
“I’ll come,” he says. “What day are the meetings?”  
  
Shiro tells him, as well as the times and locations, then says, “I also run an LGBT Alliance, if that’s something you’d want to be part of.”  
  
“Oh” is all Keith says. Technically he’s been out for a while now, but he still gets a vague surge of panic whenever he has to acknowledge it to someone else, even if they clearly would have no problem with it. “Um—I don’t know.”  
  
“No pressure,” Shiro adds, “but we have regular meetings, as well as events specifically for students of color. There’s food at those meetings, too.”  
  
“I’ll come,” Keith says, then blinks, surprised at himself. “When is that held?”  
  
Shiro gives him the rest of the details, then checks his watch.  
  
“I shouldn’t keep you,” he says. “You might miss lunch.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Keith says. “The food’s shit—sucks—anyway.” He reddens. “Sorry. I swear a lot.”  
  
This time Shiro’s smile is a grin, and maybe it’s a trick of the light, or maybe Keith is just tired, but for half a second he thinks Shiro looks exactly like his dad, exactly like how his dad looks in the old photo that used to sit on the living room table, of him when he was young and happy and holding a fat giggling baby Keith.  
  
But then he blinks, and Shiro is saying something about how he gets Keith’s struggle, cause he used to swear so much his mama would threaten to wash his mouth out his soap, and Keith remembers where he is, remembers that he’s not back in his dad’s crappy apartment staring at his dad’s face when it was young and carefree, that he’s in a steel metal box passing for a military school, that he’s staring up at someone who looks like him, someone who is his teacher and who Keith kind of wants to be his brother.  
  
He blinks again at his own thought, lets it expand in his chest a bit, and he half wants to say something to Shiro, tell him that he looks like his dad, tell him that when he goes to the meeting later this week it will be the first time he has ever eaten food cooked by someone’s mama who loves them.  
  
But then he remembers his own mama, who once held him close and who he once made laugh; remembers his dad, who once read him bedtime stories and who he once made smile because Keith did a school project on their family’s hometown in Japan; remembers that despite this they both left him anyway.  
  
He shoves down his excitement, shoves down his admiration, shoves the word _brother_ into the back of his mind with the words _mama_ and _dad_. Then he mumbles something vague in response to Shiro, and hurries out of the classroom and to the cafeteria.

.^.  
  
He escapes the word _brother_ then, but it follows him, and trips him as he tries to run from it, and catches him before he falls, and bribes him with its cooking.  
  
“I saved you dorayaki,” Shiro says to Keith after class the day after the meeting for the Asian Students’ Association, the meeting that he decided to skip because he still foolishly believed he could escape the word brother if he tried hard enough. “If you like it there’ll be more at tonight’s meeting for the JSA.”  
  
Keith takes the foil packet. “Thanks,” he mutters, and hurries out of the room to go to lunch. The meal today is especially atrocious, so he gives up on the mystery meat and takes out the foil packet and eats the dorayaki instead.  
  
It’s fucking incredible. How did someone _make_ this? How does it still taste so good after being packed up in foil and eaten a day later?  
  
Keith devours them in minutes, then spends the rest of the day flip-flopping on whether to go to the JSA meeting. In the end he caves; dinner is no better than lunch, and the meeting is right after dinner, so Keith makes a beeline for the chemistry classroom where the JSA meets.  
  
He doesn’t talk—he doesn’t really listen, either, to be honest—but he eats about a dozen dorayaki, and there’s a buoyant feeling in his chest at the sight of Shiro’s proud smile when Keith walks into the room. He tells the feeling to shut up, to go away, to remember _despite this they left you anyway_ , but the feeling only grows.  
  
It grows when Shiro hands back work through the semester ( _good work_ in the corner of an assignment, _much improved_ at the top of a worksheet, _very impressive_ above the score of his exam). It grows when Keith goes to his first event for students of color in the LGBT Alliance (board games, which at first Keith crinkles his nose at, but by the end of the hour he’s cackling at Shiro’s dismayed expression when he lands on Boardwalk and realizes Keith has three hotels on it). It grows when Keith makes the mistake of trying to read a smuggled romance novel in the cafeteria during lunch, because he’s so close to the confession that he can’t stand to put off finishing it (hidden in his textbook as he pretends to do homework, but then Shiro comes over to ask what class the work is for, and he sees the title at the top of the page, and Keith wants to shrivel up and die, but Shiro just says, “that’s a good one, it’s my favorite of that author’s” and then proceeds to give Keith about a dozen gay romance novel recommendations).  
  
It grows, and grows, and grows, until one day, towards the beginning of the second semester, Keith goes into the flight simulator for the first time, and somehow clinches the number one spot.  
  
He runs to the physics classroom as soon as the results are out, heart beating fast at the thought of telling Shiro the news. He bursts through the door—  
  
—and stops short as thirty pairs of eyes all swivel to stare at him.  
  
“Um.” Keith feels a flush creep up his neck. He’s afraid to look at Shiro. “Uh, sorry—”  
  
He backs out of the classroom and pulls the door shut, mortification spoiling his delight.  
  
( _dumb_ , his mind whispers viciously. _dumb, dumb, overeager and pathetic and dumb, he’s just a fucking teacher_ —)  
  
The door opens. Shiro steps out into the hallway.  
  
“Is everything okay?” he asks, brow furrowed with concern. “You sped right in.”  
  
“Y-yeah,” Keith manages, almost paralyzed with embarrassment, because now Shiro’s stopped his class, and come out into the hallway, and he thinks Keith has something important to tell him, and it’s just the stupid flight simulator ranking, and Keith remembers the last time he interrupted someone’s day to tell them something, remembers his foster dad when he was ten and how annoyed he got when Keith told him in the middle of the show he was watching that his coach had made him shortstop.

He considers just saying “never mind” and leaving, but Shiro’s already out here, so Keith mumbles, “I got first rank in the flight simulator.”  
  
He knows Shiro wouldn’t openly get mad at Keith for interrupting his class to tell him something so insignificant, but he expects _something_ —a “okay but next time wait until class is over to tell me” or a “I understand that you’re excited but you shouldn’t have come into class like that.”  
  
What he doesn’t expect is for Shiro to beam at him and say, “That’s fantastic! That simulator is about as old as Iverson—don’t tell him I said that—so anyone who can wrangle it is definitely talented.”  
  
The mortification vanishes, and delight floods back in to replace it, delight and relief and—  
  
“I’m really proud of you, Akira,” Shiro says.  
  
—and pride, and Keith isn’t one for hugging strangers, but Shiro isn’t a stranger anymore, he's Keith's teacher and friend and—sort of, secretly, in Keith's mind—brother, and he’s _proud_ of Keith, and no one’s ever said that to Keith before, and in a fierce rush of affection he lurches forward, arms half raising to hug him—  
  
—and then stops, and drops his arms, and takes a step back, because what the _fuck_ is he thinking.  
  
( _dumb, dumb, overeager and pathetic and dumb, he’s just a fucking teacher_ —)  
  
Keith doesn’t know what to do, so he crosses his arms over his chest, feeling stilted and awkward, expecting Shiro to ask what the hell that just was. But Shiro surprises him again; instead of asking, he pretends he hadn’t seen it, and he holds out his hand.  
  
“Good work, cadet,” he says, deepening his voice to sound like Iverson’s. “Very impressive, though I’ll make up an excuse to yell at you sometime later today to make up for the praise.”  
  
Keith bites back a grin. He takes Shiro’s hand and shakes it. “Thank you, sir,” he says, as seriously as he can manage.  
  
“I gotta get back inside,” Shiro says in his regular voice, letting go of his hand. “I think it’s illegal to leave that many fifteen-year-olds alone at once.”  
  
Keith nods. Shiro goes back into the classroom. Keith stands outside for a moment, stares at the closed door, wonders when _despite this they left you anyway_ turned into _despite this they left you anyway, and despite that you keep trying, and you keep going, because one day you will meet someone who you look up to and who is proud of you and who will teach your anger to be patient and focused, someone whose kindness will make you soft, little by little_.

.^.  
  
And then, like all things in Keith’s life, it falls apart.  
  
“You’re a minor, right?” asks the cop outside the holding cell Keith is sitting in.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The cop glares at him.  
  
“Yes, sir,” Keith says through gritted teeth. He’s too angry for this; he has a black eye and split knuckles and enough lingering rage to finish beating up the student who’s now sitting in his mom’s car and being fussed over because his family is too wealthy for the cops to detain him any longer.  
  
“You’ll need an adult to come pick you up,” the cop says. “What’s your parents’ number?”  
  
“I don’t have parents. Sir.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I go to the Garrison,” Keith says. “Sir.”  
  
“Oh, I see.” The cop looks conflicted. “We can’t let you go without an adult. I guess we could call the Garrison’s head office—”  
  
“No,” Keith interrupts, too loud in his anxiety. “No, don’t—”  
  
The cop raises an eyebrow at him. Keith stares back, trying to think quickly, because if they call the head office they’ll get Iverson, and Keith really really does not want Iverson to come get him, and honestly he doesn’t even know if he will, because he’s heard the shit Iverson says about students who break curfew, god only knows what he’d say or do if he had to pick up a student from the fucking police station holding cell, but there’s no one else to come get him, no one who would come to a goddamn police station in the middle of the goddamn night to pick him up—  
  
“We gotta call someone, kid,” the cop says.  
  
Keith bites back his first words—kid, he says, fucking _kid_ , like Keith is a child, like he hasn’t made Keith call him sir, like he hasn’t let that other boy go right away—and takes a deep breath. His black eye hurts, his knuckles hurt, his heart hurts, but his anger won’t help him out of this.  
  
_Patience yields focus_ , he thinks, and then his heart leaps, because—  
  
“There is someone, sir,” he says. “A teacher at the Garrison. Takashi Shirogane.”  
  
The cop looks skeptical. “A teacher will come get you?”  
  
Keith hesitates, for the briefest of seconds, then nods. “Yeah, he will. Sir.”  
  
“All right,” the cop says, shrugging, and goes to make the call.  
  
Hardly a minute passes before Keith starts to regret telling the cop to call Shiro. What kind of stupid decision was that? It’s the middle of the night, and no matter how much Keith thinks of him as a friend, no matter how much he wants him to be his brother, Shiro is really just his teacher, a teacher who’s going to be woken up at one AM, by the fucking police department, to pick up some random student from his class, and there’s a cold nervous knot forming in Keith’s chest and fuck fuck _fuck_ —  
  
He takes another deep breath, forms a fist with his uninjured hand and runs his thumb over the side of his index finger to try to calm down. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. He’ll apologize to Shiro and explain why he told the cops to call him, and after that he’ll leave him alone, he’ll stop going to meetings and stop talking to him during lunch and stop running to give him good news and—  
  
The cop comes back, says something about Shiro being here to pick him up, leads Keith out of the holding cell and into the waiting area at the front of the police station. Shiro is standing by the desk, signing some papers. He’s in his pajamas, a coat thrown hastily over a t-shirt and flannel pants, and the sight of it makes Keith feel worse, because Shiro should be asleep, not freezing in a police station because a stupid boy got into a stupid fight.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, as soon as Shiro turns to him. Keith looks down at his feet; he’s too scared to look him in the eye. “Please don’t be mad, I’m really sorry, they said an adult had to come get me and they were gonna call Iverson and I didn’t want them to do that but I didn’t know who else to call and”—to his horror he thinks he can feel tears pricking at his eyes—“and I’m really really sorry,” he says again, “please don’t be mad—”  
  
“I’m not mad,” Shiro says. “I was worried about you and I’m glad you’re okay. But let’s get you out of here, okay? And get something on your hand and your eye.”  
  
Keith looks up in surprise, because he’s talking in Japanese. He’s done it before, but not often, and never just in Japanese—until now it’s always been mixed with English—and absurdly the sound of it makes Keith want to cry again, makes him remember some long-forgotten memory from when he was very small, of him sniffling over scraped-up knees and his dad gently speaking to him, soothing words as he washed and bandaged the cuts.  
  
“I’d rather they not overhear us,” Shiro explains, jerking his head towards the cops.  
  
“Okay,” Keith says, then, very quietly, in Japanese, “Thank you for coming to get me.”  
  
“You don’t need to thank me,” Shiro says, smiling a little.  
  
“I do,” Keith insists. “I got into a stupid fight and you came all the way here to pick me up—”  
  
“It’s not a big deal,” Shiro interrupts.  
  
“Yes it is,” Keith protests, still in Japanese, and he starts to tack on another word to the end of the sentence, and in his mind he’s saying Shiro, but as he hears the word come out of his mouth he realizes he’s not saying _yes it is, Shiro!_ but _yes it is, brother!_ , realizes that he’s saying the word his dad used to say on the phone when he’d call his older brother.  
  
He snaps his mouth shut, eyes wide, mortification flooding through him. But Shiro’s smile only grows, wide and gentle and not weirded out at all.  
  
“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “I care about you. We’re like a family, right? This is what family does.”  
  
Keith looks up at him again, and for a second he’s bewildered because Shiro’s all blurry, and then he realizes—  
  
“S-sorry,” Keith says. He covers his face with his uninjured hand, squeezes his eyes shut, swallows past the lump in his throat, takes a deep breath to try to calm down. He doesn’t want to do this here, in front of the cops and Shiro and what feels like the whole world. “I’m not—I’m not crying,” he says, a bit lamely. He drops his hand from his face, takes another deep breath. “I’m f-fine.”  
  
“It’s okay if you want to cry,” Shiro says. “There is no shame in it. But let’s go to the car, we don’t need these whites looking at us.”  
  
Keith huffs a laugh, something short and broken, and lets Shiro lead him out of the police station. The short walk and the cold air calm Keith down enough that his eyes stop stinging and the lump in his throat mostly fades, so by the time they reach Shiro’s car he can talk properly again.  
  
“Can we—” he begins in English, then stops, because he doesn’t know if his request is weird. He knows many of the boys at the Garrison complained about their families hugging them goodbye on orientation day, has heard many foster dads and foster brothers over the years make snide remarks at boys who hug, but then he remembers that Shiro once said his mama was his best friend, that he calls her every day, that he didn’t make fun of Keith for reading romance novels, that he didn’t make fun of him for crying, so Keith blurts, “Can we hug?”  
  
“Of course,” Shiro says. He holds out his hand—Keith clasps it, confused—then uses it to pull Keith in and hug him.  
  
“Bro hug,” Keith says, with dawning comprehension.  
  
Shiro laughs. Keith can feel the rumble in his chest.  
  
“Now you know the horrible truth,” Shiro says. “I’m a frat bro in disguise.”  
  
Keith snickers. They let go and look at each other.  
  
“Thank you,” Keith says.  
  
“I already said you don’t need to thank me,” Shiro says. “Though we will talk about this fight later. You should learn to control your temper.”  
  
Keith nods.  
  
“But I’m not mad,” Shiro repeats, “and you don’t need to thank me. I’m here for you, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Keith says. He hesitates, then says, “Does this mean I don’t have to take the physics final?”  
  
Shiro blinks at him.. Then his eyes narrow, though he seems to struggle with a smile. “No,” he says. “You still have to take it. And if you bomb it I’ll still fail you.”  
  
“Oh,” Keith says, suppressing his own grin as best he can. “In that case forget it. Family cancelled.”  
  
Shiro punches his arm lightly, and Keith grins and punches him back, and Shiro threatens to take him back into the police station, and Keith doesn’t think he’s ever been so fiercely happy, or loved anyone so fiercely much, and he promises himself that he will not ruin this, that he will keep this person who is his entire family in one body, this person who has seen him angry and sullen, this person who has seen him awkward and crying, this person who has seen him in a holding cell with a bruised eye and swollen knuckles, and despite all of that he befriended him anyway, and became his brother anyway, and stayed with him anyway.

.^.  
  
Kolivan postpones the mission.  
  
“There is a complication,” he says, in the briefing right before Keith’s original departure time. “You will not depart for another varga, and unlike our earlier plans, you will go alone.”  
  
Keith nods. After more instructions Kolivan dismisses him, and Keith heads to his bunk to try to get some more sleep. Ten minutes of tossing and turning makes him realize it isn’t happening, so he takes out his tablet and calls Lance.  
  
Lance picks up on the third ring, his face filling the screen.  
  
“Keith!” he exclaims, and Keith hears echoes of his name from around Lance, who props the tablet up somewhere so Keith can see his surroundings. He’s in the lounge, sitting on the couch, with Allura next to him and Pidge and Hunk on the floor, though Keith can barely see the top of Pidge’s head. He can see the corner of a board; they’re all probably playing some kind of game.  
  
“Keeeeeith!” Pidge shouts, rising up onto her knees so her face comes into view. “I miss you! I need you back so you can side with me in the Great Modulating Debate!”  
  
“The what?” Keith asks, but Lance is glaring at Pidge.  
  
“Don’t drag him into this,” he says. “At least one of us should be spared from the horrors of modulating.”  
  
“Modulating is only horrible if it’s single modulating,” Pidge says.  
  
Hunk snorts. “I think you mean that double modulating is horrible.”  
  
“Single!”  
  
“Double modulating is for dorks,” Hunk says, then lifts up his hand, which Lance, with a deep sigh, high fives.  
  
Pidge scowls. “Well—well single modulating is for _serious_ loser _s_.”  
  
“You can’t add an adjective to the insult to make it alliterative,” Hunk says. “That’s lazy.”  
  
“Not as lazy as single modulation!”  
  
“You’re both wrong,” Allura says, and Keith can see the smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, the one she has whenever she purposely incites chaos. “You should be using triple modulation.”  
  
Hunk and Pidge gape at her in stunned silence, then start shouting over each other. Lance sighs, then says, “OKAY, ENOUGH,” picks up the tablet, and marches out of the lounge. The doors close behind him and he leans back against a wall of the hallway, sliding down to sit on the floor and holding the tablet out in front of him.  
  
“Sorry you had to deal with that,” he says, his mouth quirked up in an apologetic smile. “They’ve been like that for days now.”  
  
“I don’t mind,” Keith says, though he is relieved to be away from so much noise. “It’s kind of nice to hear them arguing over science stuff again.”  
  
“That’s cause you don’t have to hear it all the time,” Lance says.  
  
“Fair enough,” Keith acknowledges, then, “Is Shiro around? I’ve barely talked to him since I left.”  
  
“He’s sleeping,” Lance says apologetically, as if it’s his fault. “He said he’s been having really bad headaches lately so I told him he should rest for a bit.”  
  
“Headaches?”  
  
“Yeah, like migraines,” Lance explains. “Coran’s looking into it but so far it doesn’t seem like anything serious. I’ll keep you updated, though. And I’ll tell him to call you back.”  
  
“Thanks,” Keith says, and starts to say something else, but he hears the whoosh of the doors and sees Lance look up.  
  
“Oh, hi,” Lance says.  
  
Allura comes into view, sitting down next to Lance. “Their arguing is only amusing for a short while,” she says. “Then it’s just tiresome.”  
  
“You’re the one who made it worse,” Lance points out.  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Allura says primly, then looks into the screen. “I’m quite happy to hear from you, Keith. Lance has been giving us updates on how you are but it’s nice to hear from you directly.”  
  
“I’ll try to call more often,” Keith says. “It’s easier now that I have the tablet.”  
  
“Yes, Lance mentioned he gave it to you,” Allura says, with a sidelong glance at Lance, whose ears turn red. It occurs to Keith that he doesn’t know how much the others know about Lance’s visit. He hopes it’s not much; he wants to keep Lance’s love to himself for a while.  
  
“I must admit,” Allura goes on, “I was a little hurt that you haven’t called the rest of us already. You don’t _only_ have to call Lance.”  
  
Her eyes are sparkling, and Keith suddenly realizes that even though Lance probably didn’t tell her, she knows.  
  
( _she doesn’t know_ , says a voice in his head that sounds like Lance, _but she Knows_.)  
  
“I called Hunk,” he says, the defense sounding lame even to himself.  
  
“You called the castle ship and Hunk happened to be around,” Allura corrects.  
  
Keith opens his mouth to protest, then snaps his mouth shut.  
  
“You’re just jealous cause he likes me best,” Lance says, then, over Allura’s scoff, says, “Hey, you need to settle something for us. Me and Allura are arguing over whose dad is cooler and we need your vote.”  
  
Keith blinks at him.  
  
“Whose dad…is cooler,” he repeats.  
  
“Not in temperature,” Allura explains. “That confused me quite a bit when we first started this debate. ‘Cooler’”—she says the word deliberately, like a kid in a spelling bee—“refers to whose father has better qualities and has done more interesting things and has a superior personality.”  
  
“Fun fact,” Lance adds, “it’s really hard to define the word ‘cool.’ I tried telling Allura that it’s what I am, but then she said _bawaakofa_ and Coran laughed so I have a feeling that didn’t work.”  
  
“No,” Allura says firmly. “Neither of our fathers is _bawaakofa_. I would never disrespect any older person by calling them that.”  
  
“You said I have greatness within,” Lance says indignantly.  
  
“And you do,” Allura says, then, giggling, “but you are also _bawaakofa_.”  
  
“Do you see the slander I deal with?” Lance asks Keith, who is struggling not to laugh.  
  
“It’s not a bad thing!” Allura says. “It’s just not a word you’d use to describe someone who is distinguished. And my father was very distinguished. He had a beard.”  
  
“Mine had a mustache,” Lance counters. “That’s super distinguished.”  
  
“Mine was an Altean alchemist!”  
  
“Mine was a fighter pilot!”  
  
Keith startles at that. He hadn’t known that that Lance’s dad was a pilot.  
  
“My father built the lions!” Allura says triumphantly. “Beat that!”  
  
“Easy!” Lance says. “Mine built our deck!”  
  
Allura’s nose wrinkles. “Your _deck_?”  
  
“Not like the control deck or the training deck,” Lance says hastily. “It’s like an outdoor part at the back of your house.”  
  
“Oh.” Allura seems to consider for a moment. “Well, that is still quite impressive.”  
  
“It is,” Lance says proudly. “He painted it blue and he let me and my siblings put handprints in yellow paint in one corner.”  
  
Keith imagines toddler Lance sitting on a bright blue deck on a sunny day, pressing a pudgy paint-covered hand to the floor. It occurs to him, suddenly, that he wants very badly to see this deck, to sit on it with grown-up Lance on a sunny day and look at the tiny handprints in the corner, to be in the house that made Lance who he is today.  
  
Something warm washes over him, a little embarrassed and a little hopeful. He wants to cover it up, so he says, “Can’t both your dads be equally cool?”  
  
Allura wrinkles her nose again. “That’s not a real answer,” she says.  
  
“It’s not a real argument,” Keith points out. “Obviously you’re both each gonna think your dad is cooler.”  
  
“That’s true,” Allura says. “I think I shall keep arguing, though. It’s fun to see Lance get puffed up like a Jupsian chotar.”  
  
Lance splutters, and Allura giggles again, and then Keith asks what a Jupsian chotar is, and Allura tries to explain, with Lance providing sound effects and commentary. From that Allura starts talking about her favorite creatures, and Lance keeps making up more sound effects and commentary that make her glare and giggle in turns, and Keith thinks he could sit here and listen to them forever, except he glances at the clock and jolts and says, in the middle of Lance’s rendition of an Altean raband’s chirping, “Fuck.”  
  
Lance freezes. Allura looks at Keith, concerned.  
  
“It’s okay,” Keith assures them. “I just—a mission was postponed and I’m supposed to be at the pod in ten minutes—doboshes.”  
  
“Oh, then you should go,” Allura says. “Though it was really quite lovely to talk to you again!”  
  
“Yeah, same,” Keith says, then looks at Lance, and maybe it’s stupid but he wants to be alone for his goodbye to Lance, but he also doesn’t want to make Allura leave, but—  
  
“Did you hear that?” Lance says, turning to Allura.  
  
“Hear what?”  
  
“I thought I heard Coran calling for you,” Lance says unblinkingly.  
  
Keith bites back a grin. Allura stares at Lance. Lance stares back. As if by magic, Coran’s voice comes in from off screen.  
  
“There are couches right in through that door, you know!” he says. “You don’t need to sit on the floor.”  
  
Lance flips the tablet so Keith is looking up at Coran.  
  
“Oh, hello, Number Four!” Coran says, beaming. “How have you been?”  
  
“Good,” says Keith, and then Lance flips the tablet back around, and looks pointedly up at Coran, and says, “Didn’t you need Allura’s help with something?”  
  
“What?” Coran sounds bewildered. “No, I—”  
  
Keith sees Lance’s face do something complicated, eyebrows and nose and corners of his mouth. He sees Allura’s eyes light up; she looks from Lance, to Keith, then her expression turns sly. Keith resists the urge to squirm under her gaze.  
  
“YES!” Coran shouts, apparently coming to the same realization as Allura. “There’s an issue on the control deck that I need your help with, ’Lura.”

“Yes, of course,” Allura says, getting to her feet. “I’ll come along right away. Goodbye, Keith,” she says.  
  
“Be safe, Number Four,” Coran adds, and Keith hears their footsteps as they head down the hallway.  
  
“They might be eavesdropping from around the corner,” Lance says, “but at least we have the illusion of being alone.”  
  
“That’s fine,” Keith says. He still wants to keep Lance to himself for a while, but he knows the others will find out eventually, or at least suspect.  
  
“Coran heard me and Red come in when we got back,” Lance says, “and once I told everyone you could call us now cause I gave you the tablet, I think they kinda guessed the rest. But I haven’t told them anything.” He smiles, soft and crinkly-eyed. “I want to keep you to myself for a bit.”  
  
Keith’s heart clenches, and he wishes more than anything to be in the castle ship, to be sitting next to Lance on that cold floor, to run his fingers through his curly hair and kiss his constellation freckles and look into his brown eyes in person and not through a screen.  
  
But then he hears a knock at his door, and he knows it’s probably an irritated Kolivan or an irritated blade member sent on Kolivan’s behalf, and he puts wishes out of his mind.  
  
“I have to go,” Keith says. “I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”  
  
“Okay,” Lance says. “Stay safe.”  
  
“You too,” Keith replies. He cuts the call, hides the tablet in his drawer, double-checks that Lance’s love letter is safely tucked in his pocket, then goes out of his room and to the pod for his mission.

.^.  
  
Keith’s dad never talks about Keith’s mama.  
  
“What was she like?” Keith asks. He always asks on his birthday, or on a holiday, or when his dad is in a good mood, because maybe this time his present will not be a new toy or a trip to the space museum, but knowledge of his mama. “Was she pretty?”  
  
His only memory of her is him saying the word _pretty_ , so he thinks she must be. Though he read in a book once that all mamas are pretty, so that probably doesn’t help much.  
  
“Finish your dinner” is all his dad says.  
  
Usually that is enough to make Keith stop, but he is seven now, and he is nosy, so he says, “Where did she go?”  
  
He likes to imagine that she’s on an adventure somewhere, that she’s an explorer and one day she’ll come back and show him all the cool things she’s discovered.  
  
For a long moment his dad doesn’t say anything. Keith opens his mouth to ask another question, but his dad says, curtly, “She left.”  
  
“Where to?”  
  
His dad shrugs.  
  
“Why?”  
  
His dad shrugs again. Keith frowns.  
  
“Is she coming back?”  
  
He expects another shrug, but his dad says, “No.”  
  
“Oh.” Keith shrinks down into his chair. He still has a lot of food left in his bowl, but he’s not hungry anymore. “Why not?”  
  
“Some people just can’t,” his dad says, and his voice is grumpy now. He looks at Keith’s bowl. “Finish your dinner.”  
  
For a second Keith pushes his noodles around. Then he says, in a small voice, “Doesn’t she want to come back to see _me_?”  
  
(so many birthdays, so many holidays, so many days his dad is in a good mood, and she doesn’t come back for any of them)  
  
(so many good days, so many days he gets an A on his quizzes, so many days his baseball coach tells him _great job_ , and she doesn’t come back for any of them)  
  
(so many bad days, so many days he gets scrapes on his elbows and knees, so many days a kid at school is mean to him, and she doesn’t come back for any of them)  
  
“Finish your dinner,” his dad says a third time, and the conversation ends.  
  
At bedtime Keith hugs his blue stuffed hippo close.  
  
“You would come back for me,” he says in Japanese. “Right, Pom Pom?” He lowers his voice. “Yes, Akira, I would come back for you. I love you.” His voice goes back to normal. “I would come back for you, too, Pom Pom. And I love you too.”  
  
(two years later he comes back from school and finds a note from his dad saying he’s gone to get groceries and that he’ll be back soon)  
  
(back soon turns into back never, and Keith is kicked from foster home to foster home, is turned from Akira to Keith, is told he is stupid for being so attached to a stuffed animal, my god, Keith, it’s a fucking stuffed hippo, you’re nine years old, what kind of boy has a stuffed animal at that age)  
  
(and one day he comes back from baseball practice, and Pom Pom is missing, and Keith doesn’t know if he’s lost or stolen or—what—but he knows that Pom Pom does not come back for him)  
  
(and then he moves foster homes a month later, and he knows he can’t go back for Pom Pom now, too, and he decides it’s easier for his heart to be hard than for his soul to be soft, because his mama once held him close, and Keith once made her laugh; because his dad once read him bedtime stories, and Keith once made him smile; because Pom Pom was once his best friend, was once his only friend; and despite this they all left him anyway)

.^.  
  
Despite this they all left him anyway, and yet here one of them stands, with Keith’s eyes and Keith’s mouth and Keith’s face shape, this woman whose—marks, he realizes, whose marks he had called pretty, so many years ago—this woman whose knife he has carried around since he broke into his dad’s abandoned home when he was twelve and found it.  
  
He doesn’t know what he feels. They stare at each other, her as if she’s trying to memorize his features, him because he’s trying to feel something, anything, other than this all-encompassing emptiness. He had expected to be angry, or upset, or confused, or something, but he’s just—blank. Blank, and staring at this woman who is his mother, this woman who should mean everything but means nothing right now, because despite sharing blood he knows nothing about her, and she knows nothing about him, and suddenly it washes over him, this strangely exhausting sadness, because how can someone be so close to you and still ignite no spark of recognition within you? There is so much she has missed, and the thought of catching her up to where he is now, of making up for fifteen years’ worth of absence, makes him wearier than every battle and every mission he’s ever done put together.  
  
It’s a strangely exhausting sadness, but there’s something at the edges of it, something white hot and furious, something that he knows will build into a cold angry knot in his chest if he is not careful.  
  
So he looks down at the knife, turns it a little so the blade catches the light, closes his eyes, thinks of Shiro saying _patience yields focus_ , thinks of Lance’s smile. Then he puts the knife back into his pocket, looks at her again, and says, “Your knife got me beat up.”  
  
Krolia looks startled.  
  
“I used to be a paladin of Voltron,” he says, and he feels a bit like he’s reciting something, like this is a job interview and she is someone he must inform because it is his duty, not because he wants to. “We wanted to ally with the Blade of Marmora so we went to their base, and when they saw I had this they said I had to do the trials to get any information about it.”  
  
“What?” Krolia scowls, and for a moment Keith’s distracted, because it’s so like what he sees in the mirror that it’s startling. “But you’re a child—”  
  
“I’m not a child,” he interrupts, then, flushing, “I mean—I am, I guess, but I’m not—” He breaks off, frustrated; he doesn’t want to flounder in front of her, he wants to be strong and stern and severe. “I’ve been alone most of my life and I was a paladin for a long time and now I’m a member of the Blade. I can take care of myself.”  
  
“Of course,” Krolia says, more gently. “I just meant that you’re young. And the Trials are dangerous enough for a grown full-Galra, let alone a young mixed Galra.”  
  
“Maybe if you hadn’t left,” Keith says, before he can stop himself, “then that wouldn’t have been a problem.”  
  
Krolia opens her mouth, closes it. Keith crosses his arms over his chest; he feels like he might fly apart if he doesn’t hold himself together, though he doesn’t know if it’s from the exhaustion or the sadness or the fury still trying to edge its way in, or from some confusing combination of the three.  
  
“I didn’t…” She trails off, sounding uncertain. “I didn’t want to leave—”  
  
“But you did,” Keith interrupts, and he hears how loud it is, too loud for the tiny ship, too loud for how close they’re standing. “You left.”  
  
“I didn’t want to,” she says, the words somewhere between firm and pleading. “I would never have left you if it hadn’t been necessary—”  
  
“How is”—he shouts it, but he doesn’t want to shout, not now, not yet, so he cuts off, lowers his voice as best he can—“How is it ever necessary to leave your kid?”  
  
“To keep you safe,” she says, still in that half firm half pleading tone. “Zarkon’s forces wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a child, so it was safer to leave you—”  
  
“Then why have me in the first place?” he demands.  
  
“It was safe at first,” she explains, “so I thought—but then circumstances changed. And I realized it would be best for you and your father if I left.”  
  
“Best,” Keith echoes, his jaw clenched. “Best to leave me behind with no explanation. Best to let me grow up thinking my own mom didn’t want me.”  
  
Krolia starts to reply, but falters.  
  
“Why didn’t you leave anything behind?” he asks. It sounds dangerously vulnerable, so he forces himself to frown, to scowl as hard as he can. “A letter or—or a video or something, I don’t know—”  
  
“I thought your father would tell you.”  
  
“Dad never told me a fucking thing,” he says harshly. “And you shouldn’t have relied on him anyway. I’m your”—the words sound odd in his mouth—“I’m your kid, you should have explained it yourself instead of expecting Dad to do it and—and leaving behind a knife that got me fucking beat up.”  
  
( _too loud_ , whispers the softer part of his mind. _stay calm_.)  
  
( _fuck calm_ , says the other part, and he’s dismayed to hear that it’s angry again, that the work of the past few months has come undone. _she deserves your anger_.)  
  
“You could have come back,” he says abruptly. “At least visited, or—I don’t know.” He tightens his arms across his chest. “It’s been fifteen years.”  
  
“I know,” she says, and he’s surprised by the readiness with which she agrees; he’d expected her to have an excuse, but instead she just looks at him, her eyes sad and her voice soft. “I know I should have come back. And I could have. There were times when I could have come back and seen you, even for a short while.”  
  
Keith clenches his fists under his arms.  
  
“I should have left you some kind of explanation,” she goes on. “I should have made some kind of arrangement with Kolivan so you wouldn’t get hurt bringing the knife to the base. And I should have come back. And I’m sorry that I didn’t.”  
  
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to, if one _sorry_ is supposed to make him smile and uncross his arms and say that it’s okay now, that they’re okay now.  
  
“I’m sorry I left,” she says quietly, and her voice wavers a little, and he can’t decide if he hates her for being emotional over something she chose to do or if he likes her for feeling bad about it at all. “I’m sorry for it every day, I—I think about it every day. I wanted to come back to you and I know I should have but I thought it had been too long, and I—didn’t.” She sounds defeated. “It was stupid of me, but it had been so many years already, and I thought you would be better off without me.”  
  
He wants to ask how she could go so long wanting to do something but not actually doing it—  
  
—but then he remembers how he didn’t call the castle ship for weeks after he had left, how it had taken Hunk and Lance telling him that they want to hear from him before he tried to call, how he had convinced himself that they—  
  
—would be better off without him.  
  
( _it’s not the same_ , his mind whispers, the angry and calm parts alike. _it’s not the same, it’s a much bigger mistake. but it’s still a mistake. she’s not vicious_.)  
  
“I wasn’t,” he says finally. “I wasn’t better off, I—” He feels his eyes sting a little, feels a lump in his throat, and he swallows, tries to breathe through it. “It really messed me up. You leaving really—” He stops, starts over. “I think it messed up Dad, too.”  
  
Something flickers in Krolia’s eyes, too quick for Keith to read.  
  
“How is your father?” she asks, and she sounds almost—tender—and he’s grateful for the vindictive pleasure that shoots through him at the thought of what his answer is, because it distracts him from his stupidly stinging eyes and the lump in his throat.  
  
“He’s dead,” Keith says bluntly.  
  
Krolia pales.  
  
“Or so I’m guessing,” he adds. “He disappeared. Or left. I don’t know. He went to get groceries when I was nine and he never came back.”  
  
She does that thing again, where she opens and closes her mouth, starts a sentence then stops.  
  
“Which was great,” Keith goes on, and he holds on to that vindictive pleasure, holds onto the way it melts into the white hot fury at the edge of his sad exhaustion, the way it forms that cold angry knot in his chest, because he doesn’t want to cry here, he wants her to know how fucked up his life was, wants her to know all the shit he went through that she’s responsible for. His voice is loud again, and harsh, enough that he thinks he sees Krolia wince. “Cause it meant I got kicked around foster homes a lot, so I never had a real home, or a real family, or even any fucking friends cause I moved around so much, and everything I ever—liked—or cared about—either left me or got taken away—”  
  
(how is he yelling? he doesn’t remember wanting to yell, doesn’t remember deciding to, but he knows his voice is bursting out of him, filling the space, pouring out all his bitterness and resentment and confusion and anger, so much anger, so much anger that he barely knows what he is saying, so much anger that he is astonished, because how could he have carried this much around with him for so long, how has it not eaten him up alive?)  
  
When he’s done he realizes he’d uncrossed his arms. He crosses them again.  
  
“Well?” he asks, belligerent. “Aren’t you going to say something?”  
  
She hadn’t tried to speak while he shouted, hadn’t moved at all, just stood and watched him with her sad eyes.  
  
“You have the right to yell at me,” she says, though her voice wavers once more. “I deserve it.”  
  
(part of him wishes she’d argue, because it’s easier to hate her than to acknowledge that he’d missed her, and wanted her, and that something in him thinks he will want her eventually, even if he couldn’t have her before.)  
  
(but part of him, the part that thinks he will want her eventually—that part murmurs _calm_ and _listen_ , reminds him _patience yields focus_ , reminds him that she has apologized, that she knows she made a mistake.)  
  
“I’m sorry that I left,” she says again, softly. “I’m sorry, and I want to fix it. I want to make it up to you. But more than that I want you to be happy, so if you—” She stumbles, as if struggling to say it. “If you don’t want anything to do with me after this, I will understand.”  
  
His first instinct is no, he doesn’t want anything to do with her, he’s gotten his answers and he’s yelled at her and now he’s done—  
  
—but—  
  
He takes a deep breath. Shiro always says to never make decisions in anger. He takes a second deep breath, tells himself to calm down, closes his eyes, opens them, clenches his fists, unclenches them. He thinks about eating Coran’s terrible lunches, about giving Pidge piggyback rides through the castle, about Hunk telling him about his favorite comic books, about Shiro and him trying to come up with a secret handshake, about Allura telling him Altean knock-knock jokes, about Lance’s words tucked in his pocket.  
  
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” Krolia says. “I know what I did hurt you. But I want to be in your life now, if you’ll let me.”  
  
Keith is quiet for a minute.  
  
“I don’t need you,” he says finally. He sees the resignation enter Krolia’s eyes, and it occurs to him that she’s expecting him to reject her, to turn her away, and it feels—nice? sort of?—that he’s going to do the opposite, that he will see the resignation vanish. “But I think—I think it would be fine if you’re around.”  
  
As he’d predicted the resignation vanishes, relief and happiness rushing in to replace it.  
  
“I sort of have a family now,” he continues, because yes, he’d wanted her to know how badly her abandoning him had hurt him, but he also wants her to know that he’d made it, that despite everything he’d kept going, that his whole life does not revolve around this fact of her leaving, that he’s survived and found his people anyway, people who don’t leave him and who pull him back when he tries to leave them. “You leaving really messed me up but then I met Shiro, and everyone else on the castle ship, and that helped. I care about them. And they care about me. So I’m okay without you. But it’s fine if you—want to try.”  
  
“I do,” she says, with conviction. “It’s what I want more than anything.”  
  
Keith just nods. It occurs to him how tired he is; he hasn’t slept or eaten in ages, and he’s only now remembering the chaos of the mission, and his throat is hoarse from yelling. He feels shaky and he wants to not look at her right now, so he steps away towards the screen to check how much time they have until they reach the base. It’s still over a varga, so he sits in one of the chairs by the control panel. Krolia hesitates, then approaches the chair beside his and tentatively sits down.  
  
Keith reaches into his pocket, pulls out the love letter Lance had given him only days ago. He’s re-read it so many times that he’s practically memorized it, so he stares at the folded paper, runs through some of the lines in his head, _I really really like you and I think it might be more than that_ and _you still are in my heart_ and _I haven’t left you and I’m not going to, not ever_.  
  
He knows Krolia is watching him, but he lifts the letter to his lips and kisses it anyway, then puts it back in his pocket with a slightly lighter heart.  
  
“We have a long way to the base,” Krolia says at length. “Would it be all right if we talked? I’d like to hear about your family, if that’s okay.”  
  
Keith doesn’t know if it’s okay. He’s too tired to know if anything’s okay right now.  
  
“Or how you ended up here to begin with,” Krolia continues. “I was shocked to see you back there. I didn’t even know you were in space.”  
  
Keith is quiet. He thinks about what a long story it is; the prospect of recounting even a summary of it is exhausting. It occurs to him that he collects details to tell his sort-of family through the day, remembers how on one solo mission, months before he left Voltron, he had actually taken the time to put notes in his tablet so he wouldn’t forget all the stuff he wanted to tell them.  
  
He’s always excited to tell them about what he’s doing, but there’s not much excitement here. He wonders if one day he will be excited to talk to Krolia, if he’ll type out notes in his tablet for her the way he does for his sort-of family.  
  
“It’s a long story,” he says finally.  
  
“That’s fine,” Krolia says. “I’d like to hear you talk. I have fifteen years’ worth of your voice to hear.”  
  
He barely thinks the words before they’re spilling out of his mouth. “It’s your own fucking fault you couldn’t hear it,” he says, then, something hot like shame shooting through him, “Sorry—well, no, I’m not sorry—or I guess I—sort of am. Maybe. I don’t know.”  
  
She just blinks at him.  
  
“I have a temper,” he says lamely. “Though I guess you already know that cause of all the—yelling.”  
  
The corner of her mouth quirks up. “You can blame me for that,” she says. “I’m pretty sure part of the reason Kolivan posted me so far away is because he’s afraid of my temper.”  
  
He feels the ghost of a smile tug at his lips at the thought of Kolivan being afraid of her.  
  
“But I won’t mind if you snap at me,” Krolia adds. “I have fifteen years’ worth of your temper to put up with as well.”  
  
“Okay,” Keith says, then tells her about the Garrison, the Kerberos Mission, sensing the Blue Lion, finding Shiro again.  
  
“You sound close to him,” she observes. “You went to great lengths to find him.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” he says, “he’s the closest family I have. I would never leave anyone behind, but especially not him.”  
  
Half a second later he realizes what he’s said, who he’s said it to. He wonders if he should amend it, but he doesn’t want to. Not now. Not yet.  
  
Instead he says, “I don’t know where I’d be without him. He’s never given up on me.”  
  
The resignation is back in her eyes, though milder than before. “I’m glad you have someone like that.”  
  
“Me too,” he says. It comes out vindictive than he’d meant for it to, more accusing, but he doesn’t know how to rephrase it, and again, he doesn’t want to.  
  
He goes on, tells her about the rest of the paladins, about Coran and the lions and the space mice, about becoming a paladin then a Marmorite.  
  
“A member of the Blade,” Keith corrects himself, flushing, but Krolia’s already heard it.  
  
“Marmorite?” she repeats, sounding caught between confusion and amusement.  
  
“That’s what Lance calls blade members,” Keith says, smiling a little. “He’s said it in official meetings.”  
  
Krolia snorts. “I can’t imagine Kolivan liked that.”  
  
“Not really,” Keith says, still smiling, “but he didn’t get mad, either. It’s hard to be mad at Lance. Everyone likes him.” He pauses. “Well, I actually didn’t like him much when I first met him but that was just cause I didn’t know him yet. He talks a lot and those kinds of people usually annoy me. But now he doesn’t annoy me at all.”  
  
He starts to say something else, because he thinks he could talk about Lance for days without getting tired of the subject, but it occurs to him that he’s already said—enough—in a very specific tone of voice—the tone of voice that makes Krolia look at him with that face, the same one that Shiro made at him when he went to talk to him about Lance a week after they arrived in space and all his complaints turned into accidental compliments, the face that’s _seriously?_ and _aw_ at the same time.  
  
“It seems you get along well with him,” she says, and her voice is the same one that Shiro had too, during that highly embarrassing and highly illuminating conversation so long ago, the voice that’s too sly and too casual at the same time.  
  
Keith feels his face heat.  
  
“Um, yeah,” he stammers. “He’s—he’s actually my—”  
  
He shrugs a shoulder, too self-conscious to say the word.  
  
Krolia’s eyes light up. “Ah!” she says, grinning. It’s a wide grin, one that transforms her entire face, and Keith thinks this must be what she looked like, in that single memory he has of her, where he knows the fact of her laugh but not the sound or the appearance of it.  
  
(He wonders if he will see her laugh anytime soon, if she will laugh for real like she did in the memory, wonders if his memory will suddenly solidify, fill in the gaps, prompted by repetition, wonders if he’d like that or feel lost because of it. It’s the only memory he’s had for so long, and he doesn’t want to lose it, but it seems—perhaps—that there will be other memories, memories of her sad eyes and her wide grin and the marks on her cheeks that he touched and called _pretty_ so many years ago.)  
  
“Does he make you happy?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says. He blinks, surprised by his readiness; he knows Lance makes him happy, but to say it aloud to someone feels different. “I really like him.”  
  
“I’ll have to meet him sometime,” Krolia says.  
  
Keith glances at the map. They still have half a varga before they reach the base.  
  
“You could meet him now,” he says. “We could call the castle ship and you could meet everyone. I call him after missions anyway to let him know I’m okay.”  
  
“I’d like that,” Krolia says.  
  
Keith switches the screen to comm mode, then enters the link for Lance’s tablet. It rings twice, then Lance’s face fills the screen. He’s sitting on one of the couches in the lounge, holding the tablet in front of him and beaming.  
  
“Keith!” His voice is bright and cheery; it feels like it warms the inside of the ship, fills it with light and sunshine, though maybe that’s just Keith’s heart. “How’d your mission go?” He peers at the screen. “Are you still on the ship?”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says. “We’re just heading back now. And the mission was fine.” He waves a hand awkwardly at Krolia. “I found my mom.”  
  
Lance blinks at her, then looks at Keith, his expression something between stunned and worried and displeased.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says, taken aback.  
  
“You sure?” Lance glances at Krolia again, back at Keith. His mouth is twisted. “Should I be nice to her?”  
  
Something soft and warm curls in him at the thought of Lance willing to side with him without having even spoken to Krolia.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, with a small smile. “We talked.” He hesitates, then says, “I’ll talk to you about it later, but it’s okay.”  
  
“Okay.” Lance looks at Krolia and beams. “In that case, it’s nice to meet you! I’m Lance.”  
  
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Krolia says. Keith can tell she approves of Lance’s initial reaction. “I’m Krolia.”  
  
“You’re very tall,” Lance says, and it’s a mark of how well Keith knows him that despite the non sequitur he can guess what’s coming next.  
  
“Don’t,” he warns.  
  
“What?” Lance smirks. “You don’t know what I’m gonna say.”  
  
“Yes I do,” Keith says, glaring, “and you shouldn’t say it.”  
  
“It’s not my fault that I’m curious—”  
  
“Lance.”  
  
“—about how someone so tall—”  
  
“ _Lance_.”  
  
“—could have a son so short,” Lance finishes. “He doesn’t eat enough,” he says to Krolia. “Stunted growth.”  
  
Krolia snorts. Keith scowls.  
  
“I eat enough,” he says, but Lance makes a skeptical sound.  
  
“When was your last meal?”  
  
Keith thinks for a second. “Uh—”  
  
Lance makes a buzzer noise. “Wrong!” he says. “If it takes you that long to remember then it’s been too long.” He addresses Krolia again. “He always forgets to take care of himself so I have to do it for him.”  
  
Krolia’s smile is startlingly broad. “I’m very glad he has you, then.”  
  
It looks like Lance is going to say something else, but Keith hurriedly intervenes.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, “but we don’t have a whole lot of time until we get to the base and I wanted to introduce Krolia to all of you. Can you bring everyone over?”  
  
Lance nods. “Yeah, of course! Just one sec.”  
  
He props up the tablet on the couch so they can see the doors, then leaves the lounge. For several minutes Keith and Krolia stare at the empty room.  
  
“He seems nice,” Krolia says finally.  
  
“He is,” Keith says.  
  
Krolia gives him a sidelong look, as if gauging whether to speak, then:  
  
“Is he the one who gave you that piece of paper?”  
  
Instinctively Keith reaches into his pocket and clutches at the letter. “Yeah,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about it, though.”  
  
“Okay,” Krolia agrees, but he sees her smile, and embarrassment blooms within him anyway.  
  
Thankfully the doors to the lounge open, and Lance comes back in, leading the rest of the paladins, Coran, and even the space mice.  
  
He throws out an arm towards the tablet. “Everyone, this is Krolia, Keith’s mom. Krolia, this is Shiro, Hunk, Pidge, Coran, and Princess Allura.”  
  
Everyone waves as their name is spoken. When Krolia hears Allura’s name she kneels briefly, which bewilders Keith before he recalls that to her Allura is a princess, not someone who yawns over morning food goo while wearing her pajamas inside-out.  
  
“And these lil cuties,” Lance adds, pointing to the mice, who are resting on Allura and Pidge’s shoulders, “are Chulatt, Chuchule, Platt, and Plachu.”  
  
Each mouse wiggles their tail in succession.  
  
“I’d introduce you to the lions too but they’re in the hangars,” Lance says. “So maybe some other time.”  
  
“It’s quite lovely to meet you,” Allura says, in her best diplomat voice.  
  
“It’s an honor to meet you, too, Princess,” Krolia says.  
  
“I thought Lance was joking at first,” Pidge says next, then, with a giggle, “He ran up and down the halls yelling ‘KEITH FOUND HIS MOM TIME TO MEET MAMA MULLET.’”  
  
Keith gives Lance a look.  
  
“What?” Lance asks defensively. “It’s true.”  
  
The rest of the conversation is short, smoothed over by Lance whenever it gets stilted (“Why do you have markings like that?” Hunk asks, nosy as always, and at first Krolia looks taken aback, but then Lance laughs, puts his arm around Hunk’s shoulders, and says, “Hey, big guy, would you like if someone started asking about stuff on _your_ face?” He pokes a freckle on Hunk’s chin. “Why do you have this strange circle? Very mysterious.”). Coran asks about the weather and the political climate in the quadrant Krolia had been stationed in, until Pidge and Hunk interrupt with long groans about how boring this kind of talk is, until Shiro scolds them, until Allura says that they were right to stop Coran or else he’d launch into one of his stories, which, while wonderful, are all rather long, until Coran protests that his stories aren’t _that_ long, they’re just detailed.  
  
It’s messy and loud and Keith misses it so much, and he doesn’t really pay much attention to Krolia’s reactions to this, because he can’t stop smiling at the sight of all of them together, talking and bickering as usual.  
  
Soon they’re close to the Blade of Marmora’s base, so Keith has to end the call.  
  
“I’ll talk to you later,” he says to Lance, then, “Bye, everyone.”  
  
“It was good to meet you all,” Krolia adds.  
  
There is a chorus of _bye_ s, a flurry of waves, and then the screen goes dark. Keith switches it back to map mode.  
  
“I like them,” Krolia says.  
  
“I do too,” Keith replies, unnecessarily. “Since we’re almost there we should discuss what we’ll say to Kolivan about the mission.”  
  
“I’ll take care of it.”  
  
Keith frowns. “You don’t have to do that.”  
  
“I want to,” Krolia says firmly. “It’s my fault it went awry. And besides”—the corner of her mouth quirks up once more—“he’s afraid of my temper, anyway. He won’t get too mad if I talk to him.”  
  
Keith hesitates.  
  
“You’re obviously tired,” she says. “I know you can handle it, but please. Let me talk to him. When we arrive you can just go to your room and sleep.”

Something odd blooms within Keith, sort of like the warmth he gets when Shiro makes him tea because he can tell he’s feeling down without having to ask, though it’s not quite so strong, and it’s tinged with embarrassment. He doesn’t care if Shiro knows he feels shitty, but the thought of Krolia being able to tell makes him uncomfortable. It’s too close, too much, too soon.  
  
But he _is_ tired, and he hates when Kolivan lectures him about disobeying mission protocol, so he lets himself be weak, lets his mother—his _mother_ , what a strange word—do something for him, and says, “Okay.”

.^.  
  
An awkward parting from Krolia, a shitty Marmora meal, a shower, and a too-short nap later, Keith is lying on his bunk, his hands folded beneath his cheek and his tablet propped up on the wall. Lance watches him through the screen; he’s also lying down, pajamas on and skin glowing from his nighttime routine.  
  
“What did you do today?” Keith asks.  
  
“Pidge’s dad left for earth,” Lance says. “He took messages for our families.”  
  
“Messages?”  
  
“Yeah, we recorded them and he said he’ll give them out.” Lance blows out a breath, slow and a little shaky. “I really appreciate him doing it. I don’t like the thought of my family thinking I’m dead. And if—if something happens and I don’t make it back to them, they should know that I love them.”  
  
Keith wants to tell him that he will make it back, that he’ll get to see them again, but it feels like a lie.  
  
“I just—” Lance breaks off, breathes out a second time, steadying himself. “They already lost my papi. They shouldn’t have to worry about me, too.”  
  
“What happened to your dad?” Keith asks, then, “I mean—only if you wanna talk about it—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Lance assures him. Another slow breath. “He was a fighter pilot and there was a bad crash. I was only five but I still kind of remember him. And I remember the day we got the news.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Keith whispers.  
  
“It’s okay,” Lance says again. “It’s been a long time. And I think in a weird way it made our family closer.”  
  
“It still sucks.”  
  
“Yeah,” Lance sighs, and Keith hates that he’s sad, and he wants to fix it, but he doesn’t know how, until—  
  
“I can’t make any promises that you’ll see them again,” he says, “but even if you don’t, they’re still with you.”  
  
Lance’s brow crinkles.  
  
“Family is always with you,” Keith says, “in your heart.”  
  
Lance stares at him, then snickers. “You sound like an anime character.”  
  
“Shut up,” Keith mumbles, but there’s no edge to it, because he’s fine with Lance making fun of him if it means he won’t be sad anymore.  
  
There’s a second of silence, then:  
  
“Speaking of family,” Lance begins, “do you want to talk about Krolia? How exactly did you find her?”  
  
“On the mission,” Keith says, then tells him about it, about the near-miss, about their conversation on the way back. It feels good to talk to someone about it, though he feels kind of bad for dumping it all on Lance, so he stops halfway through to apologize.  
  
(“Don’t be sorry,” Lance says immediately. “You listen to me too, right? We help each other.”  
  
“Fine,” Keith says, “but if it’s too much then tell me. You’re not my—therapist, or whatever.”  
  
“I’ll tell you,” Lance promises, then, “God, we could all probably use a visit to a therapist. Do you think they have those in space?”)  
  
Eventually Keith finishes his account.  
  
“So you think you two will be okay?” Lance asks, his eyes soft.  
  
“I don’t know,” Keith replies. “I think we should try. But it’s hard.”  
  
For a long minute they just look at each other, quiet and content. Keith still feels raw, still exposed and exhausted, but lying here and looking at Lance chips away a little at the hard shell that still lingers around his heart sometimes. He likes the thought, lets it run away from him a bit, imagines Lance in a miner’s hat and holding a pick, tap-tap-tapping away at Keith’s heart and sneaking in to cover it with something permanently warm and soft.  
  
He feels his cheeks grow hot at the thought; he wants to distract himself from how dumb and cheesy it is so he tries to come up with something safely un-dumb and un-cheesy, but before he can do so Lance speaks.  
  
“I wish I was there with you,” he says. He’s whispering, the sound soothing and pleasant, like a breeze in vocal form. “I’d give you a hug.”  
  
Keith’s brow furrows, though he smiles. “We already hugged,” he reminds him, “the last time we were together.”  
  
Lance chuckles. “Do you have some kind of limit?” he asks. “Only one hug per person per year?”  
  
“No, I just—” Keith breaks off, huffs a laugh. “I don’t know. I don’t hug people very much.”  
  
“We’re gonna have to fix that,” Lance announces. “When you finally get to visit us, everyone in the castle ship is gonna take turns hugging you every hour. Including the space mice, who are adorable and deserve to participate, and not including Lotor, who is the devil in Galra form and can go choke.”  
  
Keith laughs again, more fully this time. Lance grins.  
  
“I’ll make a schedule,” he goes on, “with when exactly each person’s hug will take place and how long it will last. Minutes allotted to the hug depend on personal comfort and how cool the person is.”  
  
“Wow,” Keith says, as flat as he can manage when he’s suppressing another laugh, “I thought you _wanted_ to hug me.”  
  
Lance blinks, then frowns.  
  
“Hey!” he says, and Keith laughs again. “I’m the coolest person on this castle ship! I get to hug you the longest.”  
  
Keith makes a dubious noise, though it’s ruined by the laugh that follows. Lance sticks out his tongue at him.  
  
“I can’t believe this,” he says, with feigned outrage. “I go to all this effort to shower you with hugs and this is how you repay me.”  
  
“I don’t think I want that many hugs anyway,” Keith says. “It’d be overwhelming.”  
  
“Then maybe just one or two people,” Lance amends. “If you visit us multiple times we’ll cycle through everyone and take turns on who hugs you each visit. Is that better?”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says, and then, because his brain is still giving him dumb cheesy thoughts of Lance tap-tap-tapping away at his heart, and newer, dumber, cheesier ones of Lance tackling him with a hug every time he enters a room that Lance is in, he says, “I—I kind of wish I could hug you now, though.”  
  
Lance sits up.  
  
“Okay,” he says.  
  
Keith laughs a little. “What do you mean, okay?”  
  
“I mean, _okay_ ,” Lance says. “I’ll come give you a hug.”  
  
Keith’s eyes widen. He sits up too. “What?”  
  
Lance is getting to his feet, moving the tablet so Keith can still see his face. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says. He blows a kiss at the screen and winks. “Be ready! See you soon, babe!”  
  
“Wait—Lance—”  
  
The screen goes dark. Keith stares at his reflection in it, then puts the tablet away and goes to wash up so he won’t be gross when Lance arrives. Afterward he paces the length of his room for several minutes, wondering if he should go outside or just wait here, or if maybe he’d somehow misunderstood entirely and Lance isn’t coming at all, or—  
  
There’s a knock at the door. When he answers it Madat is standing there, waggling her eyebrows.  
  
“Your man is here,” she says, grinning, and Keith feels heat creep up his neck. “Side door, you know the drill.”  
  
“Thanks,” Keith mutters, thoroughly embarrassed, and he pretends he doesn’t hear her snicker as he runs down the hallway.

.^.  
  
The space outside the side door is empty.  
  
Keith peers at the stars, unsure whether to be annoyed at Pidge for making a cloaking device so good he can’t see the Red Lion at all or annoyed at himself for being dumb enough to try to see him anyway. After a few seconds he hears an amused purr in the back of his mind.  
  
_Invisible_ , Red says. _Trust_ and _jump_ and _I catch_ and _if no trust then no catch and you fall like silly baby bird_.  
  
Keith’s smile is almost painfully wide.  
  
_I trust you_ , Keith thinks at him. He takes a few steps back, runs forward, then jumps off the platform. For a shivering second he’s falling, and then—  
  
—and then he’s tumbling through the Red Lion’s mouth, and Red tilts a little, and Keith lands neatly, but heavily, in the pilot’s seat.  
  
Or rather, in the lap of the boy in the pilot’s seat.  
  
_Good job_ , says Red, _not silly baby bird_ , as Lance says “Oof.” He makes a face, though his arms wind around Keith’s waist to hold him in place. “You’re heavy. What the heck are they feeding you?”  
  
“You should really stop doing this,” Keith says, but it’s ruined by the stupid dopey smile still on his face. He can’t stop looking at Lance, at his curly hair and his brown eyes and his constellation freckles, and he knows he’d just seen him a few days ago but he’s so happy to see him in person again that he feels like his heart might burst. “Kolivan’s gonna get mad if you keep sneaking in here.”  
  
“Fuck Kolivan,” Lance says bluntly. “It’s not like he knows anyway.”  
  
“If you keep doing this he’ll find out eventually, and he won’t like it.”  
  
“Babe,” Lance says. “If Kolivan tries to keep me from visiting you I will face god and walk backwards into hell.”  
  
Keith squints at him.  
  
“Vine?” he says tentatively.  
  
Lance sighs. “Twitter,” he corrects, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I’m dating someone who doesn’t recognize memes. You should sit in on the meme lessons we give Allura and Coran.”  
  
“I didn’t come all the way up to space to have lessons,” Keith says.  
  
“But they’re _fun_ lessons!” Lance says. “You get to learn how to be a human teenager. Or part-human teenager. Whatever.”  
  
Keith pokes his chest for the last comment. When he does he realizes that Lance is still wearing his blue pajamas, though he’s wearing his sneakers instead of the cat slippers. He flattens his hand over Lance’s chest, then curls his fingers around the fabric.  
  
“Why aren’t you wearing your armor?” he asks.  
  
“Because this is a time when normal people sleep,” Lance says pointedly, though affectionately, “except _someone_ said he wanted a hug, so Allura had to wormhole me halfway across the galaxy to visit him.”  
  
“You didn’t have to actually come here,” Keith says.  
  
“Don’t be dumb,” Lance says. “You’re my boyfriend. Of course I’m going to come here.” His arms tighten around Keith’s waist. “Now shh. It’s time for your hug.”  
  
He pulls Keith closer so their chests press together, tucks his face in Keith’s neck, his pointy nose poking the curve of it. It’s awkward in the chair, but Keith returns the gesture, puts his arms around Lance’s waist as best he can and buries his face in Lance’s neck. He breathes him in, the scent of Altean shampoo and sweat and home, and it’s warm and close and he feels like his heart might burst again from this, a rush of loving and being loved by Lance.  
  
He doesn’t know how long they sit like that. Eventually he pulls back, enough that he can lean his forehead on Lance’s, though he doesn’t open his eyes.  
  
“Hey,” Lance whispers. “Madat said she can buy us around four vargas again, so do you wanna go somewhere?”  
  
Keith opens his eyes and lifts his forehead off of Lance’s. “Where?”  
  
“There’s a planet nearby that Allura told me about a while ago,” Lance says. “She said it’s really pretty and the only life on it is like, animals and plants and stuff, so we’d be alone. It’ll be like a date! A really weird date, but it still counts.”  
  
A date with Lance sounds fantastic. “I’d like that.”  
  
“Cool.” Lance lets go of Keith and reaches around him to take hold of the controls. It’s a tight squeeze like this, Keith squished between Lance and the control panel.  
  
“I can get up,” he says, trying to wriggle out of Lance’s lap, but Lance traps him with his arms.  
  
“Nope,” Lance says, popping the p. His eyes sparkle. “No moving around while the lion is in motion. Safety protocol.”  
  
“Red’s not moving yet,” Keith points out.  
  
“He’s about to be,” Lance counters. “Now stop talking. Don’t distract the pilot.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes.  
  
“Unless you’re uncomfortable,” Lance adds, serious now. “It’s okay if you’d rather get up, I won’t be mad or anything.”  
  
Keith’s stomach does a little jump at how considerate he is. “It’s not that,” he assures him. “I just think it’d be hard for you to fly like this.”  
  
“Eh.” Lance shrugs. “Once I flew lying down, so this is a piece of cake.”  
  
“Lying down?” Keith repeats, appalled. “When?”  
  
Lance’s voice is carefully casual. “Nyma.”  
  
There is a pause. The funny jump in Keith’s stomach gives way to something harsher, like bile. He looks away from Lance, down at the control panel.  
  
Lance sounds amused. “You’re scowling.”  
  
“I am not scowling,” Keith says, while very clearly scowling. “I don’t care.”  
  
“Good,” Lance says, “cause there’s nothing for you to care about. I was just in her lap.”  
  
That really doesn’t make Keith feel any better. But he knows it’s dumb to be mad or jealous, cause it’s not like they were dating back then, so he just says, “Okay.”  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Keith looks at him. Lance is smiling, the crinkly-eyed one he uses when he’s being extra sincere.  
  
“Nothing happened,” he says, and Keith flushes at being caught. “Besides, you’re one to talk. You made eyes at Rolo the whole time!”  
  
Keith’s flush deepens. “What—” he stammers. “No I didn’t—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Lance says. “I don’t blame you. He’s an attractive dude.”  
  
Keith looks him, at his smooth skin and his pointy nose and the line of his jaw.  
  
“Not as attractive as you,” he says. He slides his hand up from Lance’s chest, to rest on his cheek. “You’re—very handsome.”  
  
He feels heat creep up his neck yet again as he says it, but he keeps his gaze fixed on Lance, unwilling to take it back despite his self-consciousness.  
  
Lance’s ears are red. He opens his mouth, and Keith expects something triumphant, something like _ah-ha_ or _I knew it_ or _when we get back to earth I’m going to audition to be the next Disney prince_ , but instead Lance says, his voice soft and deep enough that it makes Keith’s stomach flutter, “Can I kiss you?”  
  
Keith nods. Lance leans forward, cups his cheek in one hand, and Keith’s eyes flutter shut. He hasn’t kissed Lance in so long, and for half a second he’s worried he’s forgotten what to do. But then Lance’s fingers tip his chin to the side, and their heads tilt, and the angle makes everything better, makes everything sweet and soft, reminds Keith of how to move his mouth, lets him slide his hand around to twist his fingers in Lance’s curls. Lance hums, a little _mm_ that sends a spark through Keith, something nervous and thrilled at the same time. He presses closer, and Lance’s arms tighten around him, and Keith is warm, and content, and everything is still so sweet and so soft, and then Lance is pressing warm kisses along his jaw, along the underside of it, down his neck, and suddenly everything is hazy and hot and—  
  
The Red Lion jolts, so abruptly they jerk apart. Keith blinks, dazed.  
  
“Wha—” Lance begins, but Red interrupts him.  
  
_No shenanigans_ , he rumbles, disapproving.  
  
“Oh my god,” Lance says, his ears turning rapidly red as Keith bites back a laugh. “We weren’t doing shenanigans! We were just kissing!”  
  
_Kissing leads to shenanigans_ , Red rumbles.  
  
“But we’ve kissed in here before!”  
  
_Different kissing_ , Red argues. _Soft kissing okay. Shenanigans kissing not_.  
  
Lance’s ears turn even redder. Keith decides to take pity on him before he combusts.  
  
“Let’s go,” he says.  
  
“Yeah, good idea,” Lance says, reaching around Keith for the controls once more. “Once we’re on the planet we can make out someplace where Red can’t see us.”  
  
_See_? Red rumbles. _Planning for shenanigans_.  
  
“OH MY GOD,” Lance bursts out again, spluttering over Keith’s snickers.  
  
He slams the controls forward, and Red turns around and speeds off into space. Once they’re out of the base’s range Lance turns off the cloaking, enters some coordinates, then sits back, pulling gently at Keith’s waist to bring him back too. Keith leans against him, resting his head on Lance’s shoulder and turning so his face is in Lance’s neck. He wants to press his lips to it, but despite all the kissing earlier he feels weirdly shy, so he just looks at it instead, at how the brown vanishes into the blue collar of Lance’s pajamas.  
  
“It’s half a varga to get there,” Lance says after a minute of comfortable silence. “Do you want to talk? Or if you want I can talk and you can just listen.”  
  
“I’d rather just listen to you for a while.”  
  
“Okay,” Lance says, and goes on to tell him about the Olkari movie Hunk and him had watched two days ago. The movie’s plot is boring but Lance’s commentary makes it interesting anyway, and Keith listens, chuckles at his jokes, says _hm_ and _oh_ and _what_ whenever necessary. It’s content, and almost—domestic—and Keith closes his eyes, imagines sitting in Lance’s lap on a couch in a tiny apartment, listening to Lance’s exaggerated reactions to a terrible movie playing on the TV across from them.  
  
He hears a purr in the back of his mind. He opens his eyes.  
  
_No sleep,_ Red scolds. _He talk. Pay attention._  
  
_I am,_ Keith assures him, then, _Can he hear you?_  
  
_No_ , Red says. _Different language._  
  
Keith’s brow crinkles. _What?_  
  
_Spanish for him,_ Red says. _Japanese for you. English for both at same time._  
  
Keith blinks. It doesn’t seem like Red is speaking any differently now than he does when he talks to both him and Lance.  
  
_Magic,_ Red explains. _Sounds same but actually different._  
  
_I thought you’re made of science and technology,_ Keith thinks. _Or alchemy. Not magic._  
  
_Okay, nerd_ , Red says, and Keith snorts. _Now pay attention._  
  
_Okay_ , dad, Keith thinks, and this time Red’s rumble rolls, like laughter. He leaves Keith’s mind, and Keith goes back to listening to Lance, the sound of his voice washing pleasantly over him, lulling him into a calm he hasn’t felt in ages. He closes his eyes, briefly this time so Red won’t chide him again, pictures the couch and the tiny apartment and the terrible movie, pictures this scene that seems so close and so far at the same time, and he wonders if it’s safe to hope for something that seems so wonderful and so impossible at once.

.^.  
  
Shiro leaves for the Kerberos mission a week before the new school year starts.  
  
Keith spends the entire holiday at the Garrison, in one of their shitty summer dorms for the few students who don’t have anywhere else to go. He has to wash dishes in the cafeteria in exchange for the accommodation, and in his free time he mostly just draws or reads or goes for runs or works on the hoverbike.  
  
(“The what,” Shiro repeats, when he has lunch with Keith after returning from a long visit home.  
  
“The hoverbike,” Keith says. “I’m building it in the shack I found a couple miles away from here.”  
  
“The _what_.”  
  
“It’s safe,” Keith assures him. “I stomped around a lot and the snakes all went away—”  
  
“The WHAT.”  
  
After that Keith gives up and asks Shiro how his mama is doing.)  
  
Shiro had told Keith about the mission at the end of the last school year, but it isn’t until now, when he’s showing Keith the giant shuttle and telling him about the specifics of it, that it really sinks in that he’ll be gone. Keith watches him gesture to each part of the shuttle, listens to him rattle off so many facts that Keith knows in a happier moment he would have made fun of him for it, listens to him talk about how far they’ll go and what they might possibly find and how excited he is for all the new information they’ll bring back. He watches, and he listens, and even though a part of Keith is glad that Shiro gets to do what he’s always dreamed of, part of him can’t help but think this is yet another person leaving him behind.  
  
“Keith?” Shiro’s brow is knit. “Is everything okay? You’re really quiet.”  
  
Keith blinks up at him.  
  
“Yeah,” he says finally. “Sorry. I spaced out, I was just thinking about something.” He looks at the shuttle, then back at Shiro. “You’re going really far away.”  
  
As soon as he says it he hears how it sounds, hears the unspoken in it. He cringes at how pathetic it is, and he tries to think of some way to make it less so, but then Shiro speaks.  
  
“I am,” he says. “But it’s not for long. I’ll be back soon.”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says again, more to himself than to Shiro.  
  
“And it’s not really that far,” Shiro goes on. “You’re never actually far from your family.”  
  
Keith’s brow furrows. “What?”  
  
“Family is always with you,” Shiro explains. “In your heart.”  
  
Keith stares at him.  
  
“That’s really cheesy,” he says finally.  
  
Shiro barks a laugh. “The truth is always cheesy,” he says. “And the truth is that family is always with you. No matter where I am, I am always with you.”  
  
Keith’s heart swells, but he has a reputation to uphold, so instead of saying _thank you_ or  _I’m glad you’re my family_ or _I am always with you, too_ , he says, “You sound like an anime character.”  
  
“You say that like you’re trying to insult me,” Shiro says, grinning, “but you’re the one who knows what an anime character sounds like, so you’re really only embarrassing yourself.”  
  
“Never mind,” Keith says. “I’m glad you’ll be far away. Stay gone.”  
  
Shiro laughs again, and Keith smiles, and then Shiro has to go speak to Commander Holt and Matthew Holt, so Keith goes back to his shitty dorm to read.  
  
When the shuttle takes off only a few people are allowed to be near it, so the morning of the launch Shiro meets Keith outside his dorm.  
  
“This is it,” Shiro says.  
  
Keith nods.  
  
“Try not to get into any fights,” Shiro continues. “Control your temper, okay? Remember that patience yields focus.”  
  
Keith nods.  
  
“And concentrate on your work,” Shiro says. “When I come back I expect to see a giant stack of good grades and simulator rankings.”  
  
Keith nods a third time. His throat feels too tight to speak, which is stupid, because it’s just a mission, and Shiro will be back soon, and even though he’ll be far away he’ll still be with Keith in his heart.  
  
( _fucking anime character_ , says an angry part of his mind, but the softer part, the part that’s been growing ever since he met Shiro, tells it to shut up)  
  
Shiro holds out his hand. Keith clasps it, and they move in for a hug.  
  
“Be careful,” Keith whispers, not trusting himself to speak any louder without his voice breaking.  
  
“I will,” Shiro promises. “Take care of yourself.”  
  
“I will,” Keith says back.  
  
They let go. Keith looks up at him, at this person who takes care of him because he has no one, at this person with his frat bro haircut and his proud smile and the same nose that Keith’s dad had.  
  
Keith takes a deep breath.  
  
“Bye,” he says.  
  
“Bye,” Shiro says, and then he’s walking away, and Keith is going back inside his dorm, and he tells himself that his heart is heavy not because he’s being left behind, but because someone’s spirit has occupied it until their physical form is back.  
  
He watches the launch on his computer, sees the tiny version of Shiro and the Holts move across the screen as the reporter recites information about the mission that Keith has heard a hundred times already. He keeps it on for a long time, doesn’t turn it off until the news moves on to a different topic.  
  
Later he lies in his bunk and stares out of the window at the night sky.  
  
“Good night, brother,” he says in Japanese, then counts the stars until he falls asleep.  
  
When school starts a week later he throws himself into it, determined to give Shiro only good news when he returns. It’s hard—he gets detention because two of his classes are on opposite sides of the building and he arrives late to the second one, and he forgets to study for his first quiz, and his temper still flares sometimes—but he does the best he can, runs extra fast so he can make it to class on time, studies extra hard so his second quiz score can make up for the first, tries extra hard to be polite to people so his anger won’t have an opportunity to ruin things.  
  
He does the best he can, and it works well, strangely well, suspiciously well. Every day he adds something new to the list of things Shiro would be proud of, and every night he counts the stars and says _good night, brother_ , and even though Shiro is not with him physically he is still with him in spirit, and Keith thinks, for the first time in a long time, that even if he is alone, he will be okay.

.^.  
  
And then, like all things in Keith’s life, it falls apart.  
  
It’s almost a month after Shiro left for the Kerberos mission, three weeks into the new school year. Keith is in chemistry, half focusing on his worksheet and half scheming up ways to smuggle food to the tiny lizard that sometimes hangs out in the window of his dorm room. The teacher is at her desk, checking her email and Facebook while the students work, when suddenly she gasps.  
  
“Are you okay, ma’am?” a student asks, and Keith rolls his eyes, because what a fucking kiss-up, just pretend to do your worksheet and shut up. “Is something wrong?”  
  
“It’s horrible news,” the teacher says, and Keith is only sort of listening, because it’s storm season and it’s probably something about that, and though he hopes everyone in the area is okay he’s back to worrying about the lizard. He wonders if he ought to make a home for him out of a shoebox, so he won’t be caught in the wet if it rains.  
  
But then she says, “About the Kerberos mission.”  
  
(and Keith freezes)  
  
“Did it veer off course?” the student asks.  
  
“It failed,” the teacher says.  
  
(and Keith’s stomach drops)  
  
( _no matter where I am, I am always with you_ )  
  
The teacher flips her computer around and turns on the speaker. A reporter’s voice fills the room, white and crisp, and he’s saying _pilot error_ —  
  
(and Keith’s heart skips a beat)  
  
—he’s saying _tragic accident_ —  
  
(and Keith’s chest is too tight)  
  
—he’s saying _Takashi Shirogane_ —  
  
(and Keith can’t breathe)  
  
—he’s saying _no survivors_ —  
  
(and Keith can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_ , he’s gripping his pencil so tightly it might snap, and he wants to scream but he can’t, he can’t scream, he can’t even fucking breathe, he can only think _no survivors_ , and he doesn’t want to believe it but it’s stuck in his head, over and over and over, like a chant, like a taunt, like the whole fucking universe is mocking him, like—)  
  
( _no matter where I am, I am always with you_ )  
  
( _liar_ , his mind whispers, and he doesn’t know if it’s at Shiro or at himself or at the whole world, at every fucking book and movie and TV show for telling him that no matter how alone you are one day you will find someone, you will find a person who takes you in, broken and bruised, a person who will look after you, and love you, and never leave you—)  
  
(—never leave you, until he is made to leave you, until he is taken from you, not by choice but by force.)  
  
Keith takes a breath, rough and gasping. He sees the worksheet on the desk in front of him, hears the reporter’s voice echoing through the room, and he can’t understand what he’s doing here, why he’s sitting here in a classroom staring down at chemistry equations when Shiro is lying somewhere in cold space staring at stars he can no longer see, why the clouds are still moving and the birds are still chirping and the earth is still turning when the only person that matters can no longer feel it, why Keith’s own heart is still beating, why his heart keeps thud thud thudding when Shiro’s heart has stop stopping stopped—  
  
He hears a snap. He looks down, sees the pencil in two pieces in his hand, sees the graphite and splinters smeared over his fingers. He drops the pencil halves onto the desk, feels his eyes start to sting. He clenches his jaw, then stands, so abruptly his chair almost tips over backwards, and walks out of the classroom, only vaguely aware of the teacher calling after him and the students whispering among themselves.  
  
He goes down the hallway, down another, into the bathroom farthest away from the classrooms. He locks himself in a stall, puts down the toilet seat and lid, then sits on it, knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs.  
  
He doesn’t know when he starts crying. He isn’t, and then suddenly he is, hot tears that spill out of him faster than he’d thought possible, hot tears that seem to have no end to them, darkening the orange fabric of his uniform. He hides his face in his knees, cries as quietly as he can, tries to breathe normally, tries to tell himself to stop, stop crying, just _stop_ —  
  
( _there is no shame in crying_ , he remembers, but it doesn’t matter, because that advice is stupid, stupid and useless and in a voice he’ll never hear again—)  
  
He hears the bell ring, hears the door to the bathroom swing open as boys shuffle inside during the break. He wipes his face with his sleeve, presses his lips together and tries to control his tears enough that any sniffles or hiccups will be disguised by the cacophony of voices and flushes and tap water and the stomping of feet.  
  
The warning bell rings. All of the boys slowly leave the bathroom but one, whose boots linger by the sink closest to Keith’s stall. Keith wipes his face again; the boy runs the tap and Keith sniffs under cover of it.  
  
After a few seconds the tap stops. The boots take a few steps towards Keith’s stall, and Keith knows that the boy knows, and he’s paralyzed with shame, and he doesn’t want to deal with this, with whatever bullshit this boy is going to give him for crying in a bathroom stall like some kind of baby, and he’s opening his mouth to tell him to fuck off when—  
  
“I know it’s none of my business,” the boy says hesitantly, “but are you okay?”  
  
Keith blinks at the boots.  
  
“Cause it really sucks to cry alone,” the boy goes on. “My abuelita—my grandma—always says that crying and laughing are two things that are a lot better if you do it with other people. Though I think she stole that from someone cause I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it elsewhere too. Or maybe it’s just general grandma advice.”  
  
Keith takes a deep, shaky breath.  
  
“I’m fine,” he says, as evenly as he can.  
  
There is a pause, then:  
  
“Are you sure?” the boy asks. “I can bring you something if you want. Or I can go get someone who you’d rather talk to.”  
  
(for an absurd second Keith opens his mouth to ask him to get Mr Shirogane, and then—)  
  
(—and then he remembers—)  
  
(—and he can’t breathe again—)  
  
(—and he hates this, he hates that there’s only one person that he wants to talk to right now, but he’ll never talk to him again, never hear him laugh or complain or say _I’m proud of you, Akira_ —)  
  
Keith’s eyes start to sting again. He clenches his fist, so hard his nails dig into his palm.  
  
“I’m f—” His voice cracks. “I’m fine.”  
  
The bell rings. Keith takes another deep breath.  
  
“You’re late for class,” Keith says. “You should go.”  
  
“That’s okay,” the boy says, and Keith can hear the shrug in his voice, the self-deprecation. “Iverson hates me anyway. He always finds a reason to give me detention. I could show up on time and make As all year and he’d give me detention for being too perfect.”  
  
Keith doesn’t know how it’s possible in this moment, but he feels the incomprehensible urge to laugh.  
  
Instead he says, “Go away.”  
  
( _jerk_ , his mind whispers. _he’s trying to help and you’re being so fucking rude, at least say thank you_.)  
  
“Okay,” the boy says. He doesn’t sound offended, just concerned. “I’m sorry you feel bad.” The boots start to retreat. “I hope whatever it is gets better soon.”  
  
The door swings open, then shut. Keith waits for a few seconds, then takes another deep breath, gets up, and goes out of the stall. He washes the graphite off his fingers and the tears from his face, then lets out a sigh, long and slow, and tries to figure out what the fuck he’s supposed to do next.  
  
(The rest of the day he keeps an ear out for the boy’s voice, hoping to hear someone familiar, because as embarrassing as it was to be caught crying, he thinks he should thank him, thinks that Shiro would have been proud of him for doing so.)  
  
(But only a few days later his fury explodes in the form of a fist to Iverson’s eye, and he’s kicked out, and he never gets a chance to find the boy, and he just hopes that whoever he is, he knows Keith is grateful for his concern, even if Keith never said it.)  
  
(But then months later there’s a boy who says Keith should know who he is, and Keith realizes that he does know who he is, but not because he’s a cargo pilot, or a fighter pilot, or a rival, but because he is kind, and he gives out his grandma’s advice to boys who cry in bathroom stalls, and he risks detention to make sure that someone who has lost everything is okay.)  
  
(But everyone is watching, and everyone is listening, and he needs to get Shiro out of here, and Keith can’t say _thanks for helping me out when I was crying_ in the midst of all of this, so he says _cargo pilot_ , and he knows he’s fucked up, but it doesn’t look like he can fix it.)

.^.  
  
It doesn’t look like he can fix it, except he can, and he does, and he has, and now he’s sitting in Lance’s lap in the Red Lion, staring out of the window at the prettiest clearing he’s ever seen.  
  
“Well?” Lance asks, gesturing out of the window proudly, as if he had designed this planet himself. “What do you think? Romantic, right?”  
  
Keith remembers the romance novel he’d read so many months ago, the prince and his guard in the moonlit juniberry meadow. The light here comes from tiny, dazzlingly bright stars rather than the moon, and the meadow is made up of blue grass dotted with flowers that look like sparkly dandelions instead of juniberries, and they are a spy and a soldier instead of a prince and a guard, but it’s—perfect.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he takes in more of the clearing. There’s a circle of trees around it, tall and black and densely packed, though there are more of the sparkly dandelions there too, so instead of being dark and scary it’s just soothing, and pretty, and quiet. “I like it.”  
  
He turns to look at Lance again, who beams, then leans forward and kisses the tip of Keith’s nose.  
  
“More later,” he says, leaning back before Keith can reciprocate. “Or Red will get snippy again.”  
  
Red huffs.  
  
“See?” Lance says wisely. “Snippy.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes and slides out of Lance’s lap. Lance gets up too and together they walk out of the lion and into the meadow. They start walking in a slow circle around the edge of the clearing, stretching their legs after being in the lion for so long. After a few steps Keith reaches out and takes Lance’s hand in his own. Lance squeezes his hand once, and Keith glances over at him to see his expression, which he realizes too late is a mistake; the starlight is so intense that it dapples Lance’s face, silver light dancing over brown hair and brown eyes and brown skin, and Keith has to force himself to look away and pretend to be examining their surroundings so he can remember how to breathe.  
  
It’s almost completely silent here, the only sound being a very faint hum from within the forest, sort of like a vibrating string, which Lance had said on the journey over was what the totally harmless creatures who lived here use to communicate. The air is clear, a light breeze ruffling Keith’s hair, and when he trails his free hand along the grass, he finds it soft and dry and cool to the touch.  
  
“I wish I’d brought food,” Lance says after a few seconds, his voice startlingly loud in the darkness. “We could have had a picnic. Though I guess if we get hungry we could just eat the snacks I keep in Red.”  
  
“Arusian pudding cups and Olkari chips,” Keith remembers. “Is that picnic food?”  
  
“Of course!” Lance exclaims. “That’s very romantic cuisine. The stuff of every Michelin star dinner.”  
  
Keith snorts. He trails his hand in the grass again, trying to figure out how to tell Lance that once they get to earth he wants to take him to a real Michelin star dinner without sounding like a lovesick idiot, when his fingers catch at one of the sparkly dandelions, and it—  
  
“Whoa,” Keith breathes, coming to a stop as what looks like miniature stars drift off the stem. They swirl around, tossed about by the breeze, glowing like fireflies in the darkness.  
  
“Oh yeah, Allura told me about these!” Lance says. He plucks a flower and holds it out in front of Keith. “They’re called tarepul and this is the only place they grow naturally, though they’re in special greenhouses on other planets, too.”  
  
“This is the only place they exist naturally and you’ve just killed one,” Keith points out with exasperation.  
  
“They’re not endangered,” Lance assures him. “This planet is enormous so there’s a lot of them, and Allura says no one really takes them cause they don’t have any use. They’re just pretty. And they grow easily so if you take a couple and plant them you can have a whole garden within a month.”  
  
Now that he knows he’s not destroying the planet’s ecosystem Keith feels better about stooping to pluck a tarepul himself. He holds it out to the one in Lance’s hand, touching the heads of the flowers together.  
  
“Aw,” Lance coos. “Our flowers are kissing.” He pushes the tarepul against the one Keith is holding. “Mwah!”  
  
(it’s interesting, Keith thinks, interesting and a little terrifying, that only a few weeks ago he would have rolled his eyes, or scoffed, or said _you’re so dumb_ , would have shoved down any thoughts of how endearing Lance is in this instant)  
  
(but now all he does is smile shyly, and push the tarepul back against Lance’s, and watch how Lance’s whole being brightens when he sees that Keith is playing along. He feels the way his stomach flips, the way his heart expands, and all he wants to say is _I like you, I like how silly and soft you can be, I like that you remind me to be silly and soft too, I like that you’re strong and serious between all your silliness and softness, I like you I like you I like you so much I feel like I can’t bear it, I lo_ —)  
  
“Hey,” Lance says, and Keith is brought back to the present with a jolt. “On the count of three we should blow on the tarepul and then kiss in the cloud of star fluff. It’ll be like a movie.”  
  
“The star fluff,” Keith repeats, deadpan.  
  
“Yes,” Lance says firmly. “Star fluff.”  
  
“Is that the scientific word for it?”  
  
“The scientific word for it is—” Lance thinks for a moment. “Starus Flufficus.”  
  
Keith snorts again, but says, “Okay. One—”  
  
“Two—”  
  
“Three,” they say together, and blow on the tarepul.  
  
In one of Keith’s romance novels it’d be flawless. In one of his romance novels the star fluff would surround them in an elegant flurry, a halo of starlight, and the two of them would come together seamlessly in the midst of it, and their kiss would be perfect and sweet, and it would make Keith’s toes curl.  
  
But it’s not one of his romance novels, so the breeze picks up right as the star fluff loosens from the tarepul, and instead of circling around them it sort of attacks Keith’s face until he’s dusted in it, and Lance has to brush star fluff off Keith’s eyelashes and cheeks, and he laughs a little and says “Babe, it’s all in your hair, you look like a fairy prince,” so by the time Keith tips his newly un-dusted face up to kiss Lance most of the star fluff has blown away or drifted to the grass.  
  
But he still loves it, still thinks it’s perfect and sweet, still feels his toes curl when Lance’s mouth moves against his, when he pulls him so close Keith can feel his heartbeat, when Keith clutches at the collar of Lance’s pajamas, tight enough it’ll probably stretch out the fabric.  
  
Maybe it’s not a romance novel, but it’s much better.

.^.  
  
“Do you think I’m stupid?”  
  
They’re lying in the grass in the middle of the meadow, on a checked blanket Lance had retrieved from Red, whose teasing as he had done so had been audible even to Keith ( _messy hair_ and _red mouth_ and _didn’t I say? shenanigans_ ; “No!” Lance had half shouted, the mortification in his voice palpable. “Stop _saying_ that, we were just kissing, oh my _god_ —”). Keith is lying on his back, hands folded over his chest as he looks up at the sky, at the way the tiny stars form small swirly clustered constellations, like whirls of sparkly icing on a blue-black cake. Lance lies on his side next to him, one hand resting beneath his cheek, so close Keith can feel how warm he is.  
  
Keith turns his head to look at him. Lance’s mouth isn’t red anymore, but his hair is still messy. Keith kind of wants to reach out and fix it, but he also kind of likes knowing he’s the reason it’s like that, so he leaves it how it is.  
  
Instead he reaches out with one hand and takes Lance’s free one. Lance laces their fingers together.  
  
“Of course not,” Keith says.  
  
Lance’s mouth twists.  
  
“You’re not stupid,” Keith emphasizes, confused by where this is coming from. “Why would you think that?”  
  
Lance plays with their fingers, his thumb poking gently at Keith’s hand. “It’s not a specific thing,” he says. “It’s just that everyone on the castle ship does stuff and I don’t so I feel kind of useless.”  
  
“You’re not useless, either. You do lots of stuff. You’re good at a lot of things.”  
  
“ _Okay_ ,” Lance says, with a huff. “Man, can’t a guy have bad self-esteem around here?”  
  
“No,” Keith says emphatically. “You’re only allowed to like yourself.”  
  
“Oh my god, babe,” Lance says. His ears are a little red. “I should have known you’d be the angrily supportive kind of boyfriend.”  
  
“You’re not stupid,” Keith repeats, because he’s still stuck on Lance ever thinking that. “You’re a really good strategist and you keep the team together and—”  
  
“Okay!” Lance says again, smiling. “You already gave me this speech. You don’t need to repeat it.”  
  
“If you think you’re stupid then I do,” Keith argues. “I’ll repeat it every day until you don’t think that anymore.”  
  
“Aggressive confidence building,” Lance says thoughtfully. “Just yell compliments at the person until they believe in themselves. We should market this tactic when we go back to earth. We’ll be millionaires.”  
  
Keith doesn’t really know how to respond to that, so he says, “You’re not stupid and anyone who says so is the one who’s stupid.”  
  
“I just called myself stupid though,” Lance points out. “So by this logic I would be stupid.”  
  
“No,” Keith says, “cause I said you’re not.”  
  
“But—”  
  
Keith glares at him. “No!”  
  
“All right!” Lance says, laughing. “All right. I get it. I’m not stupid.”  
  
He scoots closer, so his body lines right up to Keith’s. It makes nervousness buzz through Keith’s veins; it’s a good kind of buzz, but he wants to disguise it, so he raises his eyebrow and says, “You’re awfully close for someone who keeps saying there won’t be any shenanigans.”  
  
Lance’s ears turn promptly red, but he leans in more, moves until he’s leaned half over Keith. The weight makes Keith even more nervous, but it’s still pleasant, too, until Lance leans his forehead on Keith’s and says, in that soft deep voice that makes Keith’s stomach flutter, “Who’s to say there won’t be? We’re not in Red anymore.”  
  
And then the pleasantness vanishes, and it’s just nervousness, fierce and intense, because Keith likes kissing him, but he’s not used to this kind of thing and it’s too soon for anything else, and fuck what if Lance wants more and Keith can’t do it, what if Keith can’t ever do it—  
  
“Hey.” Lance lifts his forehead off of Keith’s and shifts so he’s lying next to him instead of over him. He kisses Keith’s palm. “Don’t look so scared. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Okay?”  
  
Keith’s panic fades. He smiles at Lance. “Okay.”  
  
For a minute they lie there in silence, then:  
  
“Did I tell you about the sentry we rigged to set off firecrackers?”  
  
Keith thinks he must have misheard. “The _what_?”  
  
“It was wild,” Lance says, and proceeds to detail all the weird shit he and Hunk and Pidge got the sentry to do and how close they came to total destruction every time they did anything. It’s absurd, but it’s also the funniest fucking thing Keith has heard in a long time, and within minutes he’s laughing so hard he has to sit up to catch his breath. Lance sits up too, energized by Keith’s response, and his account grows more and more over the top, until he’s standing by the blanket, acting stuff out and mimicking voices, and Keith’s stomach physically aches from laughing.  
  
At length Lance finishes, with a dramatic retelling of the sentry’s ascent into the stars, complete with salutes and explosion noises and humming of patriotic tunes. Keith finally manages to calm down, holding his stomach as he looks up at Lance, who’s watching him with a dopey smile on his face.  
  
“What?” Keith asks, breathless.  
  
“The best part of being your boyfriend,” Lance says, in a voice as dopey as the smile, “is that now I can stare at you when you laugh without having to make an excuse for it.”  
  
Keith’s heart feels like it might explode. He smiles back, pats the blanket next to him, then lies down. Lance lies down too, as close as he was before, and takes Keith’s hand back in his.  
  
There’s another silence, shorter than the last, before:  
  
“Did you know,” Lance says, “that I have a stuffed shark named Sharkira?”  
  
Keith stares at him, then snickers.  
  
“I named her when I was five!” Lance says defensively. “And it’s a perfectly good name! I got her from the aquarium and the tag on her fin said she was called Sharky, which is just dumb.”  
  
“That is dumb,” Keith agrees, then, snickering again, “but not as dumb as Sharkira.”  
  
“Excuse you,” Lance says, turning up his nose. “Sharkira loves her name. And her new owner does too.”  
  
“New owner?”  
  
“I gave Sharkira to my nephew,” Lance explains. “I miss her sometimes but my nephew needs her more. He has trouble falling asleep and it helps to have something to hug.”  
  
(he hasn’t thought about Pom Pom in years but he thinks of him now, of hugging him close as he falls asleep, of talking to him because there is no one else to talk to, of the day he disappeared, when Keith had torn through the room he shared with his foster brother, ignoring his shouts and the admonishments of his foster mom for caring so much about a silly stuffed animal, of searching and searching and finding nothing, of realizing they had probably given Pom Pom away because his foster dad said it’s weird for a nine year old boy to have a stuffed animal.)  
  
Lance is saying something.  
  
“What?” Keith says, too loud. “Sorry, I spaced out.”  
  
“Rude,” Lance says, though there’s no bite to it. “I asked if you have any stuffed animals.”  
  
“I had a stuffed hippo,” Keith says. “He was blue and his name was Pom Pom. My dad gave him to me.”  
  
“Pom Pom?”  
  
“That’s what I used to call hippos,” Keith says. “My dad told me the first time he took me to the zoo I pointed at the hippos and kept yelling POM POM at the top of my lungs cause I couldn’t say hippopotamus.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Lance says, grinning. “Baby Keith sounds adorable.”  
  
“I was a nightmare,” Keith corrects.  
  
“An adorable nightmare,” Lance amends. “Do you still have him?”  
  
“No,” Keith says. “He, um—when I went to my first foster home they said I was too old for stuffed animals so they took him away.”  
  
Lance looks solemn. “Oh.”  
  
“It’s fine,” Keith says, because it is, it definitely is, it’s stupid to be sad over a stuffed animal, it was stupid then and it’s stupid now. “I don’t even know if that’s actually what happened, I just came back from practice and he was gone. I used to keep him in a bed I made out of a shoebox but it was empty and he wasn’t anywhere else in the room so.” He shrugs.  
  
“That’s awful,” Lance says, scowling. “I hate those people.”  
  
“You don’t even know them.”  
  
“I know enough to hate them.” Lance’s eyes turn soft; he kisses Keith’s hand again, this time the back of it. “When we get back to earth I’m gonna buy you a new hippo. Pom Pom 2.0.”  
  
“You don’t have to do that,” Keith says, even as the thought warms him. “It doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Yes it does,” Lance says. “I’m gonna buy you ten hippos. A whole family. Mama Pom Pom and Papa Pom Pom and a bunch of baby Pom Poms.”  
  
Keith chuckles. “Why is this family so heterosexual?”  
  
“Good point,” Lance says. “Two Papa Pom Poms and a bunch of adopted baby Pom Poms. We can introduce them to Sharkira and they’ll all be best friends.”  
  
“Introduce them to Sharkira?” Keith echoes. “When?”  
  
“When you come to Cuba,” Lance says, like it’s obvious. “Marco and his family live in Varadero too so it won’t be hard to go visit Sharkira so—”  
  
“Wait,” Keith interrupts, because his brain is repeating _when you come to Cuba_ and can’t really process anything else. “You want me to come to Cuba?”  
  
“Of course,” Lance says, still sounding like it’s obvious. “You have to meet my family, right? And we can go to the beach and eat too many garlic knots and I’ll teach you to surf!”  
  
Keith doesn’t trust himself to speak.  
  
“Keith?” Lance looks worried. “Do you not want to? I mean, it’s kind of far off in the future, but I was hoping…but if you’re not interested that’s fine, I get if you’d rather not—”

“I want to,” Keith says hurriedly, before Lance can retract the invitation. “I—” He breaks off, uncertain how to say it. “I’ve thought about—that. A lot. I just didn’t think you’d want it too.”  
  
“How could I not?” Lance asks, and he’s still talking like this is obvious, like the fact of him wanting Keith to visit his family is obvious, like the fact of anyone wanting Keith anywhere is obvious. “It’s my home. I want you in it, too.”  
  
Keith doesn’t think he can speak without saying something ridiculously corny, like _no one’s ever asked me to their home before_ or _everywhere is home if I’m with you_ or _you are my home_. Instead he lifts their entwined hands to his lips and kisses Lance’s hand twice, the palm and the back of it, his gaze meeting Lance’s as he does so.  
  
Lance’s eyes are always bright, but the brown practically sparkles now, like the tarepul around them. He lets go of Keith’s hand and cups his face, his thumb sliding over Keith’s cheekbone, down along his lower lip.  
  
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, barely above a whisper.  
  
Instead of answering Keith tips his head up and kisses him. It’s so quiet, just the breeze and their breathing and the soft sound of their mouths moving together, and Keith feels so peaceful, and so content, and so warm, and he feels like he could lie here forever in this dark meadow, could lie anywhere forever if Lance is with him, could lie on a couch in a tiny apartment or a beach in a sunny city or a bed in the castle ship that feels more and more like home the longer he’s away from it, and it occurs to him that he doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, but he’ll probably have to return to the base soon, and he can’t stand it, he can’t stand having to live in a cold lonely base, can’t stand having to eat at a cold lonely table and train on a cold lonely deck and sleep in a cold lonely room, and—  
  
—and he opens his eyes, and draws a little away from Lance, enough to speak but still close enough that their lips brush when he does so, and without really meaning to, the words tumbling out of him in a rush like they can’t bear to be bottled up anymore, he whispers, “I don’t want to go back.”  
  
Lance blinks once, slow, then draws away further so look at him properly. Keith feels strangely self-conscious, feels like he’s admitted something embarrassing; he wishes Lance would stop looking at him like that.  
  
“Then don’t,” Lance says. “Come back with me.”  
  
Keith pushes at Lance’s chest. Lance sits up and Keith follows; he sits cross-legged and starts to cross his arms by instinct, but he forces them to stay apart, settling his hands in his lap instead.  
  
“I’m not a paladin anymore,” Keith says. “What would I do?”  
  
“We’ll figure it out,” Lance says, and Keith is struck by how eager he sounds, the hope in his voice when he sees Keith isn’t shutting down at the suggestion. “Matt does stuff with the rebels. Maybe you could help them. You’d be gone sometimes but most of the time you’d be with us and you could still live on the castle ship.”  
  
The rebel fighters _are_ a lot more cheerful. And they aren’t so determined to sacrifice themselves or their partners for the sake of the mission.  
  
“Would they let me join?” Keith asks. “Just like that?”  
  
Lance’s whole face lights up.  
  
“Yeah!” he exclaims. “I mean, they let Matt join, and he’s got barely enough strength to open a jar—”  
  
Keith snorts.  
  
“—so they’d definitely hire Mr Badass Ninja Samurai.”  
  
Keith considers it for a minute. There’s a part of him that bristles at the thought of leaving; not because he likes being part of the blade, but because it feels weak to leave, like he can’t handle working for them, like he’s taking the easy way out in a war where everyone needs to push themselves as far as they can.  
  
But then he remembers one of his first ever conversations with Shiro, when he’d told him he feels like he’s slacking off because he’s taking the minimum number of classes when most students take the maximum plus a ton of extracurriculars.  
  
“It’s fine to do the minimum,” Shiro had said. “You don’t have to be busy or stressed or pushing yourself to the limit to be of value. Taking less classes but being happier and having time for yourself is not any less worthy than taking on a lot of extra things just so you can seem tougher. It’s not the easy way out. It’s just what you want.”  
  
_What you want_.  
  
What does he want?  
  
To listen to Coran’s weird stories and Pidge’s scientific rambles, to laugh at Hunk’s puns and Allura’s jokes, to hug Shiro whenever he feels like it.  
  
To lie down with Lance, in a dark meadow, in a tiny apartment, in a sunny city, in the castle ship that has become his first real home.  
  
( _how is this a hard decision_? his mind whispers. _you know what you want. you’ve always known. but now you’re not afraid of it._ )  
  
Keith takes a deep breath, plucks a tarepul growing by the blanket, holds it out to Lance, and nods.  
  
“Yeah?” Lance asks, and Keith swear he’s glowing, like he’s so delighted Keith is returning that the stars in the sky and the sparkles on the flower have inhabited him and are shining outward. “You’ll come home?”  
  
Keith nods again.  
  
Lance laughs, a sudden bright burst, and then he’s blowing on the tarepul and pushing forward through the star fluff and kissing Keith all over his face, mouth and cheeks and eyelids and the tip of his nose, and Keith is laughing and Lance is murmuring words between kisses, _so happy_ and _finally_ and _I miss you so much I can’t believe you’re gonna come home_.  
  
“Wait,” Keith says through his laughter, pushing at Lance’s chest once more. “Wait, wait.”  
  
Lance sits back expectantly.  
  
“I have to talk to Kolivan,” Keith begins, but Lance interrupts him.  
  
“Fuck Kolivan!” he yells, so loud Keith thinks Kolivan can probably hear it back at the base.  
  
“You really like that phrase,” Keith says.  
  
“And he really likes being a dick,” Lance retorts, and Keith snickers. “Okay, okay, but I get it. You want to leave officially instead of just sneaking out. Flip him off while flying away in a stolen pod after cussing him out. I get it.”  
  
Keith rolls his eyes, then adds, less certainly, “I should also—talk to Krolia. Before I leave.”  
  
Lance nods, serious now.  
  
“I mean—” Keith fiddles with the sleeve of his blade suit. “I don’t think she likes working for the blade very much. And even if she doesn’t want to leave too, I shouldn’t go without telling her.”  
  
“That makes sense,” Lance agrees.  
  
“And I think I’m already scheduled to go on a mission soon,” Keith continues, “so it might be a few days before I can actually come back.”  
  
“That’s fine,” Lance says. He scoots forward and takes Keith’s hands in his own. “I waited a long time for you. I can wait a little longer.”  
  
“ _You_ waited a long time?” Keith repeats, one eyebrow raised. “I’ve liked you since the bonding moment. The bonding moment that you forgot.”  
  
Lance looks sheepish. Keith gasps.  
  
“You didn’t forget!” he shouts, trying to yank his hands out of Lance’s. “I _knew_ it—”  
  
“I was nervous, okay?” Lance pleads. He redoubles his grip on Keith’s hands and pulls him closer. “I had a crush on you since like the second day at the Garrison and you were super intimidating and talented and out of my league and I tried to be your friend but you were really rude to me so I decided to get your attention by beating you in everything but then you always just ignored me but then suddenly you held my hand and gazed deeply into my eyes with your giant pretty ones and I panicked!”  
  
Keith stares at him, trying to process the huge run-on.  
  
“You think I have giant pretty eyes?” he says finally.  
  
“How is that the most important part of what I said?” Lance demands. “I’ve already told you your eyes are gorgeous.”  
  
“I’m sorry I was rude to you,” Keith says next. “I’m bad at making friends. I’m kind of awkward.”  
  
“I know,” Lance says, then, when Keith scowls, “ _Okay_ , don’t get your mullet in a twist.”  
  
For a moment neither of them speak, then:  
  
“The second day at the Garrison?” Keith says hesitantly.  
  
Lance smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners.  
  
“I saw you in the hallway by the chemistry lab,” he says. “I thought you were cute right away but then you were looking at your phone and you smiled at something on it and BAM!” Lance takes their entwined hands and bumps them against his chest, over his heart. “Hit me right in the feels. Love at first sight.” He drops their hands between them, though he keeps them together. “I feel like I should make a disaster bisexual joke here, but it worked out for us so I guess I’m actually a barely functioning bisexual with a shit ton of luck.”  
  
In any other circumstance Keith would laugh, but—  
  
“Love?” he echoes.  
  
Lance’s ears turn red.  
  
“I mean. Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I didn’t love you then, that was just a crush. But—but I do love you now.”  
  
Keith opens his mouth, closes it.  
  
( _I love you, I love how silly and soft you can be, I love that you remind me to be silly and soft too, I love that you’re strong and serious between all your silliness and softness, I love you I love you I love you so much I feel like I can’t bear it_ —)  
  
(he wants to say it, but the words are stuck in his throat, locked in by a spike of fear so strong he has to physically breathe through it)  
  
“You don’t have to say it back,” Lance says, after a second or two of prickly silence on Keith’s part. He doesn’t look upset, to Keith’s relief. “I get that you need time for this kind of stuff. I wasn’t gonna tell you for a while, actually, but uh—I guess I am a disaster bisexual after all.”  
  
“Not a disaster,” Keith says, forcing his voice to resume working. “Not stupid or useless or a disaster.”  
  
“Right, I can’t say things like that around my angrily supportive boyfriend,” Lance says, grinning. He brings Keith’s hands to his lips and kisses them, the fronts and backs of his palms, moves to kiss his wrists—  
  
Red rumbles from across the meadow.  
  
_Time_ , he says, sounding sad. _Half varga_.  
  
“Oh shit,” Lance says, wide-eyed.  
  
“We should go,” Keith says, pulling his hands gently out of Lance’s. “We can talk more on the way back.”

.^.  
  
It’s horrible whenever anyone is in a healing pod, but when it’s Shiro it’s somehow a hundred times worse.  
  
After the wormhole incident he spends a day in a pod to heal his glowing wound. Keith sits outside of the pod for the first full hour, a nervous knot in his stomach and his hands curled into fists, wondering how someone so strong and certain could look so still and weak and unnaturally pale.  
  
( _what kind of brother are you_? his mind whispers. _brothers take care of each other but you can’t take care of him, you only managed to rescue him cause the black lion helped you, otherwise he wouldn’t be injured in a pod, he’d be fucking dead_ —)  
  
“Shut up,” he says aloud. He squeezes his eyes shut, runs his left thumb over the side of his index finger to try to calm down. “Shut up, shut up. He’s okay. Shut up.”  
  
But his brain won’t shut up, it keeps presenting him with _Shiro’s wound kills him right away_ and _those alien wildcats tear Shiro to shreds_ and _Pidge doesn’t find you two in time and the wound kills Shiro slowly, so slowly, and it’s agonizing and awful and drawn out and he makes his stupid jokes right up to the end because you’re a fucking baby who needs his big brother to be strong because he can’t be strong himself_ —  
  
He hears the door behind him open, hears familiar footsteps come up to him. He opens his eyes and sees Lance sits down beside him, cross-legged.  
  
For a minute neither of them speak.  
  
“That light really washes him out,” Lance says finally. “We should ask Coran if there’s a natural setting instead.”  
  
Keith just blinks at him.  
  
“He’s gonna be okay, man,” Lance says. His voice is softer, in a way Keith has only heard a couple times before, in a way that means he’s being sincere. “Coran said this wound is easy to fix. By this time tomorrow he’ll be good as new.”  
  
Keith draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around his legs.  
  
“I know,” he says, speaking to his knees rather than looking at Lance. “But I’m still worried.”  
  
“We all are,” Lance says. “He’s our friend. When a friend gets hurt it’s like—” He pauses, thoughtful. “It’s like when your ice cream melts.”  
  
Keith frowns.  
  
“It’s still fine,” Lance explains. “It’s still ice cream. And you know you can put it back in the freezer and it’ll go back to the way it was. But it still sucks that it melted, and there’s a big mess, and you feel shitty about it.”  
  
Keith doesn’t know how it’s possible in this moment, but he feels the incomprehensible urge to laugh.  
  
And then he remembers crying in a bathroom stall, remembers _I know it’s none of my business, but are you okay_ , remembers the incomprehensible urge to laugh, remembers kindness when he had no one. He looks over at Lance, and says, “You know the day the news about the Kerberos mission broke?”  
  
Lance nods.  
  
“Did you—” Keith takes a deep breath, shoves down a sudden spike of embarrassment. “Did you go to the bathroom that day? Or—” Keith exhales hard. “I mean, obviously you did, I mean—was there someone you—talked to?”  
  
For a long moment Lance is silent. Keith waits, his heart thudding, then:  
  
“I knew it was you,” Lance says.  
  
Keith doesn’t know whether to be relieved or more embarrassed.  
  
“I didn’t know right away,” he clarifies. “But as soon as you talked I recognized your voice.”  
  
(when Keith was twelve he’d missed the bus and called his foster mom from the school office’s phone to pick him up)  
  
(and when she’d answered the phone she hadn’t recognized his voice and he’d had to tell her it was him)  
  
(and he remembers the odd look the secretary had given him, when he’d said _hello_ then _this is Keith_ , remembers the mix of pity and disapproval and surprise on her face, at someone whose guardian doesn’t recognize their voice, foster or not)  
  
(yet here is someone who couldn’t have known him that well at the time, but knew his voice anyway, and it’s stupid for this to hold so much weight, but it—does)  
  
“Oh,” Keith says, because he realizes it’s been too long since Lance spoke. “Um—thank you.”  
  
Lance’s brow furrows. “What for?”  
  
“For asking if I was okay.”  
  
Lance makes a dismissive noise. “You don’t have to thank me,” he says. “Anyone would have done it.”  
  
He changes positions, leaning back on his palms with his legs stretched out. Keith watches the line of him unfold, at how much space he takes up, long legs and big hands and broad shoulders, and he has to look at his own knees again to fight the flush creeping up his neck.  
  
“A lot of people didn’t,” he says hurriedly, to try to cover his staring.  
  
“Those people are shitty,” Lance says firmly, and then, his voice raising to the cocky tone Keith is more accustomed to hearing, “and I am clearly the exact opposite of shitty, so obviously I was gonna ask if you were okay.”  
  
Keith feels the corner of his mouth turn up.  
  
“The exact opposite of shitty?” he repeats. “So you’re constipated?”  
  
Lance wrinkles his nose at him.  
  
“I’m trying to be _nice_ to you,” he says indignantly, and Keith snickers. “This is why we’re not friends.”  
  
Keith sobers instantly.  
  
“We’re not?” he says, and he hears how it sounds, how it comes out too fast, too alarmed.  
  
( _don’t sound so fucking heartbroken_ , his mind whispers angrily. _it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter at all_ —)  
  
Lance is staring at him, wide-eyed, and Keith knows he heard it too, the too-fast and the too-alarmed.  
  
“I mean.” He seems at a loss for words. “I don’t know.” He shifts, sitting cross-legged once more. “I don’t—hate you.”  
  
Something like relief washes over Keith, though it’s subdued, too tentative to be hopeful.  
  
“I don’t hate you either,” he says.  
  
There is another silence. Keith looks everywhere but at Lance, who eventually gets to his feet.  
  
“I’m gonna go see what Hunk is doing,” he says. He sticks his hands in his pockets. “If you want you can come along, too. The time’ll go by faster if you’re doing stuff instead of sitting here staring at the pod.”  
  
Keith glances at the pod. He’s still worried, still feels like it’s partially his fault Shiro is in there to begin with, but sitting here won’t accomplish anything, and Lance has a point.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and any lingering doubt he might have had disappears at the sight of Lance’s smile, big and bright and sudden, brown eyes lighting up and crinkling at the corners.  
  
He thinks about that smile as they play a board game with Hunk, as they eat dinner later that day, as he goes to sleep that night, as he brushes his teeth the next morning. He tucks it into his heart next to the smile Lance had given him after they’d defeated Sendak, and puts it away in the minutes up to and after Shiro’s release from the healing pod, as he hugs him tightly and tells him he’s glad he is okay, as Pidge pokes his side so she can get a turn to hug Shiro too, as everyone else piles around them in a big group hug.  
  
He puts it away, and doesn’t bring it back out until hours later, when he’s sitting with Shiro on the darkened control deck, leaning against one of the walls and watching the stars.  
  
They’ve been silent for the past ten minutes, content to simply be in each other’s presence after so much chaos. But then a particularly bright star catches Keith’s eye, and reminds him of Lance’s eyes, bright as he smiles, and Keith says, all in a rush, “I think I have a crush on Lance.”  
  
Shiro yawns.  
  
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he says.  
  
Keith punches his arm.  
  
“ _Ow_ ,” Shiro says with emphasis, rubbing the spot where Keith had punched him with exaggerated care. “I only have one arm left. Please be nice to it.”  
  
Keith scowls at him.  
  
Shiro sighs. “Okay, so you have a crush on Lance—”  
  
“I _think_ I have a crush on Lance,” Keith corrects.  
  
Shiro ignores him. “But this isn’t new,” he says. “You said this after the fight with Sendak.”  
  
“No I didn’t,” Keith says, frowning. “I said Lance was kind of nice.”  
  
Shiro gives him a pointed look.  
  
“That’s not the same thing as having—as _thinking I might have_ a crush!” Keith protests.  
  
Shiro’s pointed look grows even more pointed.  
  
“I hate you so much,” Keith mutters, and Shiro laughs.  
  
“You don’t need to look so miserable,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with liking someone.”  
  
“It is if he hates you,” Keith mumbles.  
  
“Lance doesn’t hate you,” Shiro says.  
  
“Says who?”  
  
“Voltron,” Shiro says, so fast that Keith suspects he’s rehearsed his conversation in his head—which is alarming, because Keith definitely _has not_ considered Lance as a crush before this moment, not _at all_. “We wouldn’t be able to form it if any of us actually hated each other. Which means,” he adds, a bit sing-songy, “you didn’t actually mean it when you said you hated me just now.”

Keith digests this information.  
  
“He’s never hated me,” he says at length, a little amazed.  
  
“Yes, Akira,” Shiro says, exasperated but fond. “Lance has never hated you.”  
  
For several minutes they are quiet again.  
  
“I meant to ask you before,” Shiro says, “but so much has been going on that I haven’t been able to. Why did you get kicked out of the Garrison?”  
  
Keith snorts.  
  
“I punched Iverson in the face,” he says.  
  
Shiro barks a laugh, then cuts himself off and clears his throat.  
  
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, though the sternness is ruined by the sparkle still in his eyes. “I thought I told you to control your temper.”  
  
“He was being a dick,” Keith says bluntly. “He was talking shit about you after the—you know. And I—I don’t know. I couldn’t stand hearing it.”  
  
Shiro’s amusement vanishes.  
  
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he says, and Keith swears he can feel the room change, feel the black cloud creeping in, the one that hung over his head for so many months, interrupted only by weird energy and incremental additions to a map and the fierce conviction that his brother was not dead, but lost. “I worried about you a lot. Whether you were okay.”  
  
“Whether I was—” Keith leans forward, incredulous. “You were captured and imprisoned and your—your fucking arm got chopped off and whatever the hell happened to your nose and—god knows what else—and you were worried if _I_ was okay?”  
  
“Of course,” Shiro says, as if it’s a perfectly reasonable line of thought. “You’re my family.”  
  
Keith slumps back against the wall.  
  
“I think about my mama every day,” Shiro goes on. He’s whispering now, and looking straight ahead out of the window, as though he can see her all the way on earth if he looks hard enough. “She’s alone now.”  
  
Keith wants to say something, but then he remembers that in his own grief it hadn’t even occurred to him to call Shiro’s mama, that it hadn’t occurred to him until a month later, one early morning as he trudged into town for groceries and saw a mother and her young son crossing the street, and he snaps his mouth shut. He feels like he’s an intruder, like he isn’t supposed to hear this, like he isn’t allowed to.  
  
“She thinks I’m dead,” Shiro says, and Keith hates how the words sound, slow and disbelieving, like he can’t understand how it’s come to this, to live and breathe but be so far that she doesn’t know it. “She probably has my death certificate. I probably have a gravestone somewhere, on top of an empty grave.” He chuckles, though it’s devoid of humor. “Sometimes I think about her face when I show up on her doorstep again. She’ll think I’m a ghost.”  
  
There is another silence, so long Keith’s stomach starts to tie itself into knots, because it’s not a good silence, and he doesn’t know what Shiro is thinking about but he knows it’s not pleasant, and he wants to say something, and he wishes he were more like Lance, wishes he would say something reassuring or funny or—  
  
And then Shiro speaks, so quietly Keith barely hears it.  
  
“I thought about killing myself,” he says, “in Zarkon’s prison.”  
  
Something cold grips Keith’s heart, sudden and fierce.  
  
“Or just letting myself die,” Shiro goes on, still so quietly the words are hardly audible. “Not eating or not defending myself when there was a riot or—or not fighting back in the arena.” He does that chuckle again, more a huff of breath than a real laugh. “Everyone at home thought I was dead anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered.”  
  
(Keith wonders sometimes, what Shiro sees when he closes his eyes at night, if he sees his home, if he sees his mama, if he sees Zarkon’s prison, if he sees the arena, night after night after night, fighting prisoner after monster after prisoner after monster, people whose blood he shed and creatures whose horrors he silenced.)  
  
(He remembers reading a book about a pair of brothers, years ago, remembers the younger brother’s leg snapping during a battle with the villain, remembers reading how painful it was, how much he cried, how long it took to heal, remembers the older brother saying _I wish it were me and not you_ , remembers thinking it must be strange, strange but nice, to love someone so much that you would take on their pain and bear it for them, so they might have peace.)  
  
(Strange but nice, and now he understands, because he would do anything to take his brother’s pain from him, to lift the weight of it from shoulders made heavy with responsibility, and make it so that Shiro does nothing but smile, and laugh, and be happy, for the rest of his life.)  
  
Keith breathes, in and out.  
  
“It would have mattered,” he says, and despite his best efforts his voice wavers.  
  
Shiro looks at him. Keith looks back, at these eyes and this face and this person who had once contemplated no longer existing.  
  
Then Shiro smiles, and puts his arm around Keith, and hugs him close to his side.  
  
“I know,” he says, “and I’m glad I didn’t do it, cause if I hadn’t lived to see you again I wouldn’t be able to make fun of your haircut,” and then he chuckles, and ruffles Keith’s hair, and Keith tucks his head against Shiro’s shoulder, and he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but for this moment his heart is content.

.^.  
  
The trip back to the base goes smoothly. They spent most of the journey talking to Red, who is annoyed.  
  
_Mad_ , he rumbles, as they fly back. _Hog Keith for self whole time. Rude._  
  
“I missed him!” Lance says.  
  
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not right here,” Keith says.  
  
_Miss him too,_ Red says. _Miss him more._  
  
“Do not!”  
  
_Do too._  
  
“Do not!”  
  
_Do too._  
  
“Do—”  
  
“Stop!” Keith interrupts, swallowing his laughter. “You can both have missed me.”  
  
They make it back to the base with only minutes to spare. Red hovers by the platform, mouth slightly open so Keith can sneak onto it. Keith kisses Lance’s cheek—Lance’s ears turn red—then slides out of his lap and heads towards the platform.  
  
“Wait!”  
  
He turns. Lance runs up to him and throws his arms around him. Keith returns it instinctively, his arms winding tightly around Lance’s waist.  
  
“Another hug,” he says, his voice muffled by Keith’s neck. “To last until you come back to us.”  
  
“It’ll be soon,” Keith promises. “I’ll come back soon.”  
  
_Two doboshes_ , Red warns.  
  
They let go. Lance kisses his mouth once, swiftly, whispers “Bye,” then hurries back to the pilot seat as Keith scrambles out of the lion and onto the platform.  
  
“Bye,” he says, as Red closes his mouth and the interior of the lion vanishes from view.  
  
_Love, hope see soon_ , Red rumbles, warm and comforting in the back of Keith’s mind, and then the presence fades, and fades, and fades, until it’s gone completely, and Keith is left alone on the platform, staring at the stars.  
  
Alone, but with a full heart, and with the prospect of seeing them again soon, and of being so surrounded by people that he’ll be overwhelmed by it—so not alone, not really, not categorically, not permanently.  
  
He smiles, turns around, goes through the side door—  
  
—and runs smack into Krolia.  
  
“Wha—” He splutters, takes a step back and looks up at her. “Sorry.”  
  
Krolia glances at the door, then at him.  
  
“Were you outside?” she asks.  
  
“Uh.” Keith shifts his weight. “Yeah.”  
  
Krolia lifts an eyebrow. Keith hesitates.  
  
“Lance came to see me,” he says finally. “Madat lets him in sometimes and I go out to meet him. The Red Lion has cloaking so they sneak in and then we all go somewhere for a while.”  
  
Krolia grins, and again Keith is struck by how much it transforms her face, again he wonders what she looks like when she laughs properly, again he thinks of his one memory of her, of her faceless voiceless laugh, and he’s overcome with the wish to be funny, to be laugh-out-loud funny like Lance is, because he wants to see this laugh, to fill in his memory.  
  
But he isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, so he puts away his wish and decides he will have to wait until Krolia and Lance are in the same room in person, because surely she will laugh out loud at something Lance says.  
  
“I’m impressed you’ve found a way around Kolivan,” she says, still grinning.  
  
“Madat cuts his comm,” Keith says. “Though even if she didn’t Lance would probably come anyway. One of his favorite sentences is ‘fuck Kolivan.’”  
  
Krolia snorts. “Every time I learn anything about this boy I like him more,” she says, and pride blooms in Keith’s chest, because everyone should like Lance, everyone should see how wonderful he is. “Anyway, I’m glad I found you, because I have to talk to you about something.”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“I don’t want to work here anymore,” Krolia says matter of factly. “I did it because I wanted to be useful and there aren’t many people who will let a Galra work with them. But working for the blade is part of what kept me from you and now that I’ve found you I don’t ever want to risk losing you again. So I’m going to find someplace else to work. And I know I haven’t earned the right to tell you what to do, but I would like it if you left, too. Nowhere in the universe is safe, necessarily, but there is a specific danger to the blade, and I would feel better knowing you aren’t working here.”  
  
For a long moment Keith is quiet. He wonders what this conversation would have felt like if he hadn’t already planned to leave, if Lance hadn’t already made it clear to him that he has a place to go and people who love him. He thinks it might have annoyed him, that despite Krolia recognizing that she can’t tell him what to do her request would have pricked at him anyway.  
  
But now, with Lance’s smile and Lance’s kisses and Lance’s hugs fresh in his mind, and Lance’s letter tucked in his pocket, and a bit of tarepul star fluff that he’s just now noticed is clinging to the hem of his blade suit, all he can feel is calm, because this makes his decision much easier.  
  
“I was already planning to go,” he says. “I’m scheduled to go on a mission in a few vargas but after that I was going to tell Kolivan that I’ll be going back to the castle ship.”  
  
It’s not until Krolia’s expression clears that Keith realizes how nervous she had been.  
  
“Oh,” she says, sounding relieved. “Good.”  
  
There is a pause, an unspoken question hanging in the air between them. Keith wavers, unsure if he should ask it, unsure if he even wants to ask it, but he thinks of what Shiro would want him to do, what Lance would want him to do, thinks of Krolia trying, and hoping, and leaving behind the only organization that would definitely accept her, just for his sake.  
  
So he opens his mouth once more, and says, “If you don’t have anywhere else you plan to go, you can come to the castle ship, too.”  
  
Her smile is softer than her usual grin, though her eyes light up.  
  
“I would love that,” she says.  
  
Keith nods, for no real reason other than not knowing what else to do, then says, “I’m kind of tired and I have to be ready for the mission so I’m going to go sleep now.”  
  
“You don’t have to go on that,” Krolia says firmly. “I’ll talk to Kolivan and some other blade member can go instead. Or I’ll come with you.”  
  
“I don’t need you to—” Keith begins, too harshly, then stops himself.  
  
( _it’s not wrong for her to want to intervene on your behalf_ , part of his mind whispers.)  
  
( _no_ , whispers another part, _but it’s also not entirely wrong to resent it, since you’ve taken care of yourself for so long_.)  
  
He takes a deep breath.  
  
“I’m going on the mission,” he says, more evenly. “I promised that I would and I don’t want to make someone else go in my place just because it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous for them too, right? Whoever would replace me also has people who care about them. And I don’t need you to come. I can take care of myself.”  
  
Krolia looks reluctant, but she says, “I understand.”  
  
“But as soon as I come back,” Keith says, “I’ll quit. We can talk to Kolivan together.”  
  
Krolia nods.  
  
“I’m going to go sleep now,” Keith says once more. He starts to walk past her. “Good night.”  
  
“Good night,” Krolia says, and then he rounds the corner and heads to his room.

.^.  
  
It doesn’t occur to Keith how exhausted he is until he lies down. He ends up sleeping until only minutes before the pre-mission briefing; he washes up in a hurry, then pulls out the tablet hidden in his drawer and pulls up Lance’s comm link to let him know he’ll be gone for the next few hours. He presses ‘call’ and immediately receives an error message.  
  
“What?” he says aloud, frowning.  
  
He presses ‘call’ and again the message pops up. He tries a third time, a fourth, then switches to text mode, types out _going on mission, will call once back_ , and hits send.  
  
Error message again. Panic prickles in the pit of his stomach, though he stomps it down. He pulls up Hunk’s comm link, tries calling it, tries texting it, and again: error messages.  
  
“No,” Keith mutters, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying no to, but no, _no_ , not this, not now—  
  
He pulls up the comm links for Pidge, Shiro, Allura, Coran, then the main screen on the control deck, presses ‘call’ three times for each, tries sending a text to each.  
  
Error messages across the board.  
  
“Fuck,” he says. He fumbles with the tablet, dropping it onto the bed with a thud. “Fuck—”  
  
He looks at the tablet again. There’s a symbol in the corner of the error message; he clicks on it and it says _Troubleshoot?_ He clicks it; there’s a load screen, so similar to earth computer ones that despite his distress he has the hysterical urge to laugh, and then:  
  
_Contact Does Not Exist_  
  
Keith blinks at it.  
  
_Contact Does Not Exist_  
  
( _what_ , says part of his mind, _the fuck_ )  
  
_Contact Does Not Exist_  
  
( _don’t freak out_ , says another part of his mind, though it’s getting smaller and quieter by the moment. _don’t freak out, it’s okay, it’s probably just Pidge messing with the castle ship’s tech again, if something happened to them you would know_ —)  
  
( _how the fuck would I know_? says the angry part of his mind. _this place doesn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone, the castle ship could have exploded and the paladins could be dead and you wouldn’t know cause they wouldn’t fucking tell you_ —)  
  
( _you would know_ , says the calm part of his mind, small and quiet. _you would feel it_ )  
  
He lets out a breath, long and slow, then presses his palm to his heart. It’s beating too fast, but it feels whole.  
  
( _they’re okay_ , says the calm part of his mind, stronger now. _you would know if they weren’t_ )  
  
He’ll just have to go on this mission without telling them. Lance knows he has one more anyway; hopefully he’ll understand that as the reason for the silence on Keith’s end.  
  
Keith puts the tablet away and heads out of his room for the briefing. During it he asks Kolivan if there’s been any news of the paladins, but Kolivan gives him a curt “No” and goes back to logistics.  
  
Right before leaving Krolia catches Keith by the pod taking him and two other blade members to the ship they’ll be infiltrating.  
  
“Be careful,” she says.  
  
She makes an odd motion with her hands, as if she’s going to hug him; Keith steps back, then feels bad, then feels confused for feeling bad. Krolia doesn’t look disappointed by his reaction, only resigned.  
  
“I will,” he says, to cover the discomfort of the past few seconds. He goes into the pod, turns to watch her as the doors close. “I’ll see you soon.”  
  
The last thing he sees is her nod, and her hand lifted in an awkward sort of wave, and her eyes, sad again after so many smiles.

.^.  
  
It makes sense, Keith supposes, as he sits in the prison cell of the Galra commander’s ship, that as soon as he actively cares about living, as soon as he has a reason not to die, as soon as he has people who he loves and who love him, as soon as he knows his worth to them enough that he had planned to leave the blade and go back to the castle ship for good, he would come as close to dying as he has since Naxzela.  
  
He never told Lance about that, he realizes. He wishes he had now, wishes he had told Lance a lot of things, wishes he had told Lance how much he likes the way his hair curls over his neck, how much he likes the way Lance knows exactly what to say when no one else does, how much he loves him, so much that it feels like it fills up his whole being, like it’s the only thing he does and ever will want to do.  
  
But he hadn’t, and now he can’t, because he’s exhausted, and his shoulder is fucked up, and the pod and the other two blade members left without him, and even though he’s chopped and stabbed the walls of this prison as much as he can bear with how bad his shoulder hurts, his Galra blade can’t cut through the layers of steel, and he’s pretty sure he’s stuck here.  
  
It’s a weird kind of prison cell. It’s quite small, barely large enough that he can stretch out either way, and instead of bars there are walls on all four sides, smooth grey steel that he can barely discern in the darkness. It’s completely quiet; as soon as the Galra commander threw him in here and shut the door all sound from outside cut off, so abruptly that Keith thought he’d lost his hearing. He’d tried the door right away, but it seemed to have vanished upon being sealed; he’d run his hand over where it was over a dozen times but there’s nothing there, just the wall.  
  
Also—he might be wrong about this, it might just be paranoia—but he’s pretty sure the oxygen in here is dropping, that with each passing minute it’s fractionally harder to breathe.  
  
So. Not great.  
  
He touches his left shoulder gingerly. He’d gotten hit by debris from an explosion one of the blade members set off as they escaped; he thinks his shoulder might be broken, or very near it. It hurts like hell, but he can’t do much about it, so he grits his teeth and tries to breathe through the pain.  
  
He—might die here. Keith tips his head up at the ceiling he can’t see and lets out a long, slow breath. The blade won’t come back for him, Voltron doesn’t know where he is, and there is no way out of here. The Galra commander will probably return soon, but unless they try to use him as collateral—an unlikely possibility, given that the blade has no qualms about sacrificing members, and he isn’t a paladin anymore so the commander wouldn’t think to offer him to Voltron—then that might be the last thing Keith ever sees, a sneering Galra commander pointing a blaster at him. Or torturing him. Or both.  
  
Keith scoots so his back is against the wall, leaning his weight on his right shoulder to take some of the pressure off his left one. He holds his Galra blade in his right hand; it’s somewhat comforting, and he runs his thumb over the hilt the way he usually runs it over his index finger when he stims, letting the familiar motion soothe him.  
  
He’s—angry. He’s very angry. But he’s also accepted his fate at this point; he’s been here around half a varga and he’s had time to realize that there is very little chance of him escaping. He’ll do his best when the Galra commander returns, assuming they don’t just leave him to starve to death, but he thinks it’s best that he be realistic; he’d have to overpower the heavily armed commander with a ruined shoulder and a single sword, then make it past the rest of the sentries, then either take this ship or steal a pod, go back to the base, or contact the castle ship and see if Allura can wormhole him to it, or if they can wormhole to him.  
  
It’s a long shot, and he’s going to try, but he is also acutely aware that this might be it.  
  
He wishes it wasn’t. He can’t say he’s ever been too fussed about dying before—he’s never _wanted_ to die, but he didn’t think much of sacrificing himself for the cause. But now that he’s here he realizes he really really doesn’t want to die, not when he hasn’t hugged Shiro in ages, not when he hasn’t sparred with Allura in ages, not when he hasn’t heard one of Coran’s made-up stories in ages. He doesn’t know if Pidge ever won the modulating debate, or if Hunk ever returned that romance novel.  
  
He doesn’t what Krolia looks like when she laughs.  
  
He doesn’t know what Lance’s home looks like, what he’d look like if Keith told him he loves him.  
  
Keith inhales, exhales, ignores how the motion shudders through him. He will get out of here. He will get out of here, and he will hug Shiro, and spar with Allura, and listen to Coran’s stories, and hear Pidge brag about modulating, and hear Hunk gush about the novel. He will get out of here, and he will see his mama laugh, and he will see his boyfriend’s home, and he will tell him that he loves him.  
  
_I will get out of here_ , he thinks, and he says it over and over, like saying it enough times will make it so, and he’s starting to make himself believe it, starting to think his chances of escape aren’t so infinitesimal after all, when the ship swerves, hard enough he’s knocked into the other wall, all his weight landing on his left shoulder, and the pain is so severe that he blacks out.

.^.  
  
When Keith opens his eyes he’s horribly, bone chillingly cold, and all he can see is white.  
  
He blinks a few times, hoping his eyes will adjust. After four blinks he hears a mechanical whir and a door opens in front of him. He sees the inside of the castle ship, and realizes, with a pleasant lurch of his stomach, that he’s tumbling out of a healing pod.  
  
He stumbles on the top step but catches himself before he falls down the rest of the stairs. He looks round, his pleasure at being back here giving way to confusion as he’s met with an empty room. Whenever anyone comes out of a healing pod everyone else is always there to welcome them; why is no one here now?  
  
It makes him uncomfortable, makes hot nervousness shoot through him, because if no one is here then that means no one cares, and if no one cares then he shouldn’t even be here, because surely he has done something wrong, something that deserves this treatment—which he has, because he’d left them—  
  
The doors at the other end of the room whoosh open. Coran walks in.  
  
“Oh, hello, Keith!” he says. “I was just coming to check on you. You’re out of the pod early.”  
  
Early. _Early_. The relief that washes over him is staggering. So it’s not that they don’t care, it’s that he came out of the pod early.  
  
“What happened?” he asks. “How did I get here?”  
  
Coran waves a hand. “Questions later, Keith,” he says. “You should change into your clothes and get some food in you. There’s some leftover goo from lunch in the kitchen.”  
  
Leftover goo? Keith frowns. Coran seems odd, though he can’t quite put his finger on what’s wrong—  
  
“Don’t just stand there gawking, Keith!” Coran says, and suddenly Keith realizes—  
  
“Why are you calling me that?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Keith,” Keith says, his frown deepening. “You hardly ever call me that. What happened to Number Four?”  
  
Coran looks at him as though he’s grown a second head.  
  
“Why the quiznak would I call you Number Four?” he asks. “You’ve left Voltron. You’re not a paladin anymore. Why would you have a number?”  
  
Keith opens his mouth, closes it.  
  
“Oh,” he says finally. “Oh—okay.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Um. Okay. I’ll go get some food.”  
  
Coran doesn’t respond. He’s busy with the healing pod, closing the door and checking it over for maintenance.  
  
“Right,” Keith says lamely, then turns and goes out of the room.

.^.  
  
Keith’s clothes are musty, which is weird, because he remembers Hunk telling him that when it’s his turn to do the laundry he tosses Keith’s clothes in too to prevent them getting smelly from sitting in the closet. As soon as Keith thinks it he feels bad—just because Hunk used to do it doesn’t mean he still does, or that he has to. It’s not weird to not clean other people’s clothes when they aren’t even there. Right?  
  
Afterward he goes to the kitchen to hunt down the leftovers Coran had mentioned. Allura is sitting at the table with a bowl of food goo, alternating between eating it herself and feeding it to the space mice with a miniature spoon.  
  
“Hi,” Keith says as he enters.  
  
“Hello,” Allura says coolly.  
  
Keith glances at her as he opens the Altean equivalent of a fridge to look for the leftover food goo. It’s weird she wouldn’t say anything upon seeing him after being in a healing pod. But maybe she’s just busy? She does have a lot on her mind. But she’s just sitting here, feeding the space mice, eating food goo. Wouldn’t she at least say _something_?  
  
As he thinks he rummages through the fridge, but there’s nothing there except individual raw ingredients and some unfamiliar packets that bring to mind the Garrison lunch mystery meat.  
  
“Hey, Allu—” He catches himself; it feels wrong to call her Allura when she apparently isn’t interested in talking to him. “Princess?”  
  
She doesn’t look up from the tiny helping of food goo she’s feeding to Chulatt. “Hm?”  
  
“Coran said there’s leftover food goo but I can’t find it.”  
  
“This,” she gestures to the bowl, still without looking up, “is the leftover food goo.”  
  
“Oh.” Keith closes the fridge. “Um—is there anything else already ready to eat? I’m kind of hungry.”  
  
“Sorry, no,” Allura says, now feeding Platt. “Dinner will be in a few vargas, though.”  
  
A few vargas? A mission, and an injury, and a stint in the healing pod, and no food for a few vargas?  
  
( _something is wrong_ , his mind whispers. _something is wrong something is wrong you know it you know this is wrong something is wrong_ —)  
  
He feels panic creeping up his spine, panic that this is wrong, panic that this isn’t wrong and that this behavior is what he deserves. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes.  
  
_Patience yields focus._  
  
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll wait. See you later.”  
  
“Hm,” she says again, and he leaves the kitchen.

.^.  
  
It doesn’t take long to find Hunk and Pidge. They’re in the room they use for their tech and engineering work, sitting on the floor and surrounded by myriad tools and parts and tablets.  
  
“Hi,” Keith says, standing awkwardly in front of them. “I got out of the healing pod early.”  
  
“No surprises there,” Pidge says, tapping away at a tablet. “You rush everything. It makes sense you’d rush healing, too.”  
  
(it should be a joke)  
  
(but it’s not)  
  
(it’s caustic, and harsh, and accompanied by an eye roll, and he—)  
  
(he knows something is wrong, but he doesn’t know _what_ —)  
  
“He doesn’t rush _everything_ ,” Hunk corrects, examining a machine part. “Making friends and talking about his feelings takes him longer than Zarkon’s time as emperor.” He shoots Keith an exasperated look. “Though he does rush getting rid of those friends. Leaving and hardly ever calling.”  
  
Keith flushes.  
  
“I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I’m trying. I’ve been calling all of you more lately.”  
  
“Only cause Lance makes you,” Pidge scoffs.  
  
“No,” Keith says. “No, that’s not—”  
  
“How much you wanna bet he won’t talk to us at all after he goes back to the base?” Hunk asks Pidge.  
  
“Hm.” Pidge stops typing and adjusts her glasses. “That’s not really a bet worth making, since it’s one hundred percent certain he won’t.”  
  
“I will,” Keith insists, then, “Well, actually I won’t, because I’m staying.”  
  
Hunk and Pidge look up at him.  
  
“Okay,” Pidge says, then returns to her typing.  
  
“All right,” Hunk says, then returns to his machine part.  
  
Keith blinks at them, hot nervousness shooting through him a second time, because they should be excited, shouldn’t they, they should be happy—  
  
—or is that arrogant? Maybe it’s arrogant to assume they’d be happy to see him again, maybe he’s thinking too much of himself, of his value to them—  
  
( _no_ , his mind whispers firmly, _no, you are valuable to them, they should have been more excited, something is wrong, you know what it is you know it you’ve seen this before you just have to think_ —)  
  
He looks at them once more, intently. There’s something about Pidge especially that seems off, and he squints at her, trying to figure it out, when—  
  
“Pidge,” he says, so sharply she winces, “did you get new glasses?”  
  
“Where the heck would I get new glasses?” she asks, annoyed. “These are the ones I’ve always had.”  
  
(they’re not)  
  
(they’re the wrong color)  
  
(and they’re too small)  
  
(and there are alarms blaring in Keith’s brain, because—)  
  
( _this isn’t real_ , his mind shouts, _this isn’t real this isn’t real everything is wrong this isn’t fucking real_ —)  
  
( _but what is it_? he asks himself. _how do I get out if I don’t know what it is_?)  
  
His eye falls on a machine part near Hunk, the arm of a spindly robot, and in a flash he remembers the trials, remembers who he thought was Shiro coming to greet him when he fell through the trap door in the floor, remembers Shiro reaching out a hand to help him out, a hand that he later realized was not metal, but flesh—  
  
—and all of a sudden he knows what this is.  
  
He glances down at himself and sees the red and black and white of his clothes flicker, a bit like a hologram, so for a brief second it looks like he’s still wearing a blade of Marmora suit.  
  
“Motherfucker,” Keith mutters.  
  
“Hey!” Hunk scolds. “Don’t say stuff like that. Especially around Pidge.”  
  
“I’m not a baby,” Pidge snaps, scowling, but Keith doesn’t wait to hear the rest, because he’s running out of the room, and down the hall, and he needs to find Shiro, he needs to confirm that this is what he thinks it is—  
  
He sees the doors to the control deck and grins as he sprints towards it, because he knows this is it, he knows he’ll find Shiro here, and that Shiro will act weirdly, and that Shiro will have his real arm, and that Keith can work on getting out of here, this hallucination or whatever the fuck it’s called—  
  
He bursts through the doors, sees Shiro standing by a map of the galaxy they are currently in, and his grin widens, and he hurries towards him, and he—  
  
—he stops short, and freezes, because Shiro turns around, and Keith sees white hair, and a scarred nose, and—  
  
—and a prosthetic, an arm of metal instead of flesh.  
  
( _what the fuck_ , his mind whispers. _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ —)  
  
“Keith,” Shiro says, with a small smile, the one that’s familiar and distant at the same time, the one that’s so peculiar because his smiles are usually so genuine and full. “You’re out of the healing pod! It’s good to see you.”  
  
Keith forces down his panic. “It’s good to see you, too,” he says, and instinctively he starts to take a step towards Shiro, arms half raised, because they should hug, shouldn’t they, they haven’t seen each other in person in months—  
  
But Shiro doesn’t move, so Keith stays where he is, crossing his arms over his chest instead.  
  
Shiro frowns. “Are you okay?” he asks. “You seem a little fidgety.”  
  
(the last time Keith had botched trying to hug him, so many years ago—)  
  
(and he had pretended not to see it—)  
  
(had shaken his hand and made a joke—)  
  
( _he might have his real arm_ , Keith’s mind whispers, _but this is not him_.)  
  
“Why didn’t you ever call?” Keith blurts.  
  
Shiro’s frown deepens. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean.” Keith stops, curls his fists under his arms. “I called the castle ship so many times and you were hardly ever around. Lance said he’d tell you to call me back but you never did.”  
  
“Oh.” Shiro’s expression clears. “I’m sorry, Keith. I forgot.”  
  
(forgot?  
  
(after months of separation, he forgot?)  
  
(forgot his brother?)  
  
(forgot his brother, who he hugged outside of a police station in the middle of the night, who he said he would be with always, no matter where he is?)  
  
Though it’s not unreasonable. He’s stressed, and under a lot of pressure, and has a lot of responsibility, and has been through hell and back. It—makes sense—that he would have no time for Keith anymore.  
  
(Keith has read a hundred descriptions of romantic heartbreak, has read how it’s the worst feeling in the world, has read it tears you down more than anything else)  
  
(but it’s a lie, it’s a complete lie, it’s the biggest lie he’s ever been told, because this is awful too, because to think that Shiro forgot him, that he has no time for him, that it didn’t occur to him one fucking time to check up on him in the months he’s been gone, to pick up the fucking call or return it, is devastating)  
  
(all heartbreak is horrible, and Keith’s heart breaks now, and he can’t bear to be here, with this person who means so much to him and who he seems to mean so little to)  
  
( _wrong_ , his mind says, but he tells it to shut up, because this isn’t made up, because this part is real, the part where Shiro acts unlike himself, the part where he never calls Keith back.)  
  
“I’m going to go find Lance,” Keith says.  
  
“I think he’s in the lounge,” Shiro tells him, with that same odd small smile, and without another word Keith turns and walks out of the control deck.

.^.  
  
Lance is indeed in the lounge. He’s sprawled on the couch, going through something on his tablet, though when Keith walks in he sits up and grins.  
  
“You’re out of the pod!” he exclaims. “Welcome back, babe!”  
  
Keith forces a smile and sits down next to him. “Hi,” he says. “Can you tell me what happened? The last thing I remember is being on that commander’s ship.”  
  
“It’s a long story,” Lance says. “I’ll tell you later once everyone’s around, I want to have a good audience for it. But for now”—he waggles his eyebrows—“there’s much more important business for us to take care of.”  
  
At first Keith is bewildered, but then Lance cups his cheek and moves in, clearly intending to kiss him. Something between guilt and renewed panic shoots through Keith, and he turns his face to the side, dislodging Lance’s hand. It feels wrong to kiss this Lance when he might not be the real one.  
  
Lance frowns. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing,” Keith says, too quickly. “I just, um—I don’t feel like kissing right now.”  
  
Lance’s frown deepens. “What do you mean, you don’t feel like it?” he repeats, incredulous. “We’ve been dating long enough, haven’t we?” He leans towards Keith, who scoots away. Lance sighs. “Come on, babe, I haven’t seen you in ages! It’s just a kiss.”  
  
( _wrong_ , Keith’s mind shouts, _wrong wrong wrong Lance would never do this he would never say this he would never make you do anything you don’t want to do this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong_ —)  
  
( _but Shiro_ , says another part, _Shiro acted the way he’s been acting lately_ —)  
  
( _wrong_ , says the first part, more firmly. _wrong wrong wrong that’s wrong too_ —)  
  
(real Lance _had_ said Shiro’s been acting weird lately, disregarding the team and forgetting things and yelling and not caring as much about the others—)  
  
(—and Keith thinks it must be even worse than he’d thought, if this version of Shiro matches up to the real one, if the supposedly real Shiro acts like the Shiro who exists in a world where Coran calls him Keith, and Allura ignores him, and Pidge and Hunk aren’t happy to see him, and Lance tries to pressure him, a world where his friends don’t care about him—)  
  
(—but he doesn’t have time to worry about that now, so he files it away for later, to examine more carefully once he’s gotten out of this stupid hallucination or whatever the hell it is)  
  
He stands. Lance watches him, annoyed.  
  
“I’m gonna go shower,” Keith lies. “I’ll be back in a bit.”  
  
He doesn’t wait for Lance’s answer; he walks out of the room as fast as he can, then breaks into a run as soon as he’s through the doors. He racks his brain as he runs, trying to remember the last time, how he had gotten out.  
  
Red had helped. But Red isn’t here, and last time he hadn’t even realized everything was fake until after the fact, and he doesn’t know what will happen now that he’s figured it out—  
  
There’s a giant whorl of black in the floor in front of him; he sidesteps it and keeps going, then realizes there’s a similar whorl in the wall to his left, fracturing the ceiling, splitting the doors, and he doesn’t know what will happen if he doesn’t escape this before the entire thing falls apart, but he doesn’t want to wait to find out.  
  
He decides his best bet is probably the healing pod; in the few books he’s read with faerie lands the way out is usually the same way you came in. He jumps over another dark whorl in the floor, sprints down one hallway and then another, sees the door to the room with the pods, squeezes in past the blackness overtaking it, and bursts inside.  
  
There are black whorls all around the room, in the floor, the ceiling, the walls, creeping over every healing pod except the one Keith had come out of. Coran is still by it, as if he hadn’t moved since Keith had left the room, totally unconcerned and unnoticing of the way the structure is falling apart.  
  
Keith jumps over a couple whorls in the floor, pushes past Coran with a muttered “sorry,” steps inside the healing pod he had come out of, yanks the door shut, and closes his eyes.

.^.  
  
Keith’s eyes snap open. He sits up, gasping through the pain shooting through his left shoulder, and scoots so he’s leaning against the other wall of the cell, against his right shoulder instead. He closes his eyes, tries to breathe; he runs his thumb over the hilt of his knife again, then in one quick movement, yanks the back of his blade suit around and cuts out the circular disk at the neck, the one that activates the visions.  
  
He tosses the disk toward the corner farthest from him, lip curled as though he’s disposing of a cockroach. Then he tucks his knife into the same pocket Lance’s letter is in, clutching briefly at the paper before withdrawing his hand and curling it into a fist so he can stim as he tries to regulate his breathing, though it’s hard, because it feels like the oxygen in here is lower than ever.  
  
It was fake. It was fake, it was one hundred percent fake, and if he dies here, then it’s with the knowledge that those were not his real friends, that his real friends like him, and care about him, and love him, and—  
  
The ship jolts, and this time he’s better prepared, so he’s able to press against the other wall and not bump his bad shoulder. This jolt is different from the last; it’s not a sharp turn like the swerve had been, but external, like an explosion, the whole ship shaking back and forth, over and over, as if—  
  
—as if—  
  
(his real friends like him, and care about him, and love him, and—)  
  
He hears a roar, long and loud and furious, so powerful it somehow penetrates the soundproof walls of this prison, and in the back of his mind he hears a low rumble beneath it, _hang on_ and _be okay_ and _come for you_.  
  
(—and rescue him, and come for him, come back for him every time, every single time, no matter what, no matter how far he is.)  
  
The grin that unfurls over his face is almost painful in its intensity; he knows there’s still a long way to go, but Red is here, Red is _here_ , and he feels like he’s glowing, because it’s gonna be okay, even if he still doesn’t know how he’ll get out of this damn cell—  
  
_Leandro_ , Red rumbles. _Very angry. Will come inside and rescue. Knight in shining armor. Like your romance book_.  
  
Despite everything Keith huffs a laugh. _Is now really the time to make fun of me_?  
  
_All time good time for making fun_ , Red rumbles, and then the ship jolts once more, and he roars again.  
  
_My cell is soundproof_ , Keith tells him. _How will Lance find me_?  
  
_I tell_ , Red says. He roars a third time. _Commander puny coward. Just staring like silly fish. Why no shoot back_?  
  
_You want them to shoot back at you_?  
  
_More exciting_ , Red explains, then, after a pause, _Leandro inside_.  
  
Keith gets to his feet and goes to where the door had been before it vanished into the wall. It’s more difficult than ever to breathe now; he doesn’t know if it’s the amount of time he’s been in here or something triggered by all the movement or his own exhaustion, but he’s starting to feel a bit faint from how hard it is to inhale.  
  
_How far is Lance_? he thinks at Red. _My shoulder’s hurt and I’m losing air in here_.  
  
Red’s concern swells. _Soon_ , he rumbles. _Leandro sniping sentries. Very cool_.  
  
Keith chuckles. _Are you gonna give me commentary_?  
  
_Yes_ , Red says. _Distract from pain. Now he use blaster—now sniper—now blaster—now SWORD—now he chop sentries_ —  
  
Red cuts off with another roar. The ship jolts yet again; Keith clings to the wall to keep from falling over.  
  
_They shoot him_ , Red says, seething, and Keith’s stomach drops. _Commander shoot him from behind—COWARD_ —  
  
Keith feels like he can’t breathe at all, though he doesn’t think it has anything to do with the air in the cell. Is he okay?  
  
_Graze arm_ , Red reports. _Still going. Almost to you. No more talk. Will blast for hurting you two_.  
  
He remains in the back of Keith’s mind, a comforting presence as he waits by the wall, as he pictures how bad a graze is, if Red is telling the truth about it or if he’s just downplaying it so Keith won’t worry. The ship rocks back and forth now, probably under the force of Red’s fire, and Keith knows it’s dumb to listen for anything but he does anyway, straining for any sign of Lance—  
  
_There_ , Red rumbles. _Says he will shoot wall. Go to corner_.  
  
Keith tucks himself against a corner. _Okay_ , he says.  
  
For a beat there’s nothing, and then a hole explodes in the wall, not large enough to fit through but enough to weaken the foundation. He can’t see anything through the mess of smoke and folding wall, but it’s getting easier to breathe, and sound floods in, overwhelming in its suddenness, Red’s roars and sentries shouting and the creaking of the ship and the nonstop crack of Lance’s bayard as it shoots an even bigger hole in the wall.  
  
And then it stops, and Lance yells _Keith_ and Keith never ever wants him to sound like that, furious and terrified, his voice cracking a little—  
  
“I’m here!” Keith shouts hoarsely over the noise. He runs forward through the smoke, hops over the wreckage of the wall, and then—  
  
Lance’s hug is so tight Keith thinks he might pass out again.  
  
“Shoulder,” he croaks, eyes squeezed shut with pain even as he wraps his right arm around Lance’s waist. “Fucked up.”  
  
“Oh shit, sorry,” Lance says, letting go of him and looking him over. Keith looks him over too; he’s dirty and sweaty and his right arm has a nasty burn in it.  
  
“Red said you got shot,” he says.  
  
Lance makes a dismissive sound. “It just got my armor,” he says, but Keith thinks he might be lying, because that burn looks pretty deep, but before he can argue Lance is pulling at his hand. “Come on, we gotta get out of here. The commander hid somewhere once Red started blasting at them cause they’re a fucking coward, and Red and me got most of the sentries, but I don’t know when the commander will come back out or if there are still a few sentries around—”  
  
He breaks off, lifts up his blaster, and shoots at a spot halfway down the hall. The sentry topples over, metal armor clanging and blaster skittering away.  
  
“Like that one,” Lance says, and the grin he shoots at Keith feels just as fatal as the shot he’d fired at the sentry.  
  
( _corny motherfucker_ , his mind whispers, rolling its eyes)  
  
“Let’s go,” Lance says, and together they run down the hallway. Keith takes out his Galra knife, letting it melt into a sword so he’ll be ready right away.  
  
The path to the entrance is suspiciously clear, though it’s explained once they get to the doors, when six sentries appear, seemingly out of nowhere and apparently waiting for them, blocking their path to Red.  
  
Both boys glance at each other and grin. Then they’re running forward, swords flashing in the air—and damn, Keith has seen Lance’s sword but not in action, not swinging across a sentry’s torso like some kind of fucking epic hero, and it’s kind of embarrassing but Keith really has to work to concentrate on slicing apart sentries rather than gaping at Lance.  
  
And then it’s over, sudden silence after the ring of metal against metal. Keith turns to Lance and they both grin again, swords hanging limply at their sides. Keith’s shoulder is screaming with pain but the thrill of the last few minutes helps him ignore it.  
  
“Sharp work, samurai,” Lance says, breathing hard, and then his eyes widen, and Keith knows what it is, and he starts to whirl around to face the sentry—  
  
—but they’re already collapsing, laser shot fizzling in the center of their chest.  
  
Keith turns back to Lance, who smirks and waggles his eyebrows at him, blowing imaginary smoke off his blaster. Keith rolls his eyes, pretending he can’t feel the heat curling through him.  
  
“Don’t roll your eyes at me!” Lance protests. “That was cool!”  
  
“Fine,” Keith concedes, the smile evident in his voice. “Very impressive, sharpshooter.”  
  
Lance beams. Together they head out of the entrance; Red purrs happily, drifting closer to they can jump inside. Lance goes first (“so you can land in my lap again,” he explains, “which we are definitely doing only because it’ll make it easier on your shoulder and not because I want you to sit in my lap”), and then Red tilts, trying to make the movement as smooth as possible for Keith—  
  
—but before he can leap inside Keith hears a click from somewhere to their left, and he feels Red’s purr turn into panic, and he sees Lance pop up out of the lion, face twisted and bayard out once more, but then something explodes into Keith’s left shoulder, and everything goes black.

.^.  
  
When Keith opens his eyes he’s horribly, bone chillingly cold, and all he can see is white.  
  
He blinks a few times, though he knows his sight won’t change until the healing pod opens.  
  
( _a healing pod_ , part of his mind whispers, with a vague lurch of panic. _what if_ —)  
  
( _this is real_ , another part says, soothing. _Red and Lance came to get you. they probably just flew you here. this is real_.)  
  
The vague panic lingers nevertheless, and he hears the mechanical whir, sees the door slowly slide open, and he remembers tumbling out on his own, seeing no one there, and fuck fuck fuck what if—  
  
He falls out of the healing pod and into something warm and solid. He blinks and sees he’s in Lance’s arms.  
  
“Hey, man,” Lance whispers, and for a second Keith is confused, because he’d been expecting something like _babe_ instead of _man_ , until he sees the other paladins hovering behind Lance and realizes Lance doesn’t want to put him on the spot. “You feeling okay?”  
  
Keith straightens, though he stays close to Lance. He wiggles his left shoulder; he’s tired and hungry, but it feels fine.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, and Lance smiles, wide and crinkly eyed, and then he’s hugging Keith, so tightly Keith thinks his shoulder might break again, and Keith is hugging him back, and he buries his face in Lance’s neck, breathes him in, and he doesn’t ever want to be anywhere else but here—  
  
“Quit hogging him!” he hears Pidge say impatiently from somewhere behind Lance. “We want to hug him, too!”  
  
“I’m not done yet,” Lance says, his voice muffled by Keith’s neck.  
  
“Aw, come on,” Hunk pleads. “We’ve missed him, too.”  
  
“We all care about him, Lance,” Shiro says, mildly amused.  
  
“Just come join us,” Lance says, and then Pidge wriggles her way into the hug, and Hunk wraps his arms around them all, and then Allura is there, and Coran, and Shiro, and he’s pretty sure he sees the space mice scamper up to Allura’s shoulder to join in, and it’s one giant group hug, and Keith remembers the last time they did this, under such radically different circumstances, and he kind of feels like laughing for no reason other than how wonderfully happy he is.  
  
Lance shifts so he can kiss Keith’s neck, swift and stealthy so no one else will notice—or at least, if someone does notice, they respect Keith’s comfort enough not to comment—then whispers, “We have to talk, there’s a lot of stuff I gotta catch you up on.”  
  
The way he says it makes it sound more serious than news of general castle ship antics. Before Keith can respond, however, the group hug disbands, because Coran has to check on the healing pod (“Must make sure Number Four’s stint in there went smoothly!” he says cheerily, and Keith almost breaks down at how glad he is to hear him say _Number Four_ instead of _Keith_ ), and Allura has to go check that dinner is finished (“it was my turn to make it,” she says, “so I made sure everything is very spicy, just how you prefer it,” and Keith beams so big at her that she laughs, startled), and Pidge and Hunk have to set up the lounge (“Shiro says we can eat in there,” Pidge announces, the way she might if her father had given her permission to do something, “so we’re gonna play board games and catch you up on everything.” ; “We went to this super cool place called Oriande,” Hunk explains, “and Allura gained like, alchemical powers and stuff, but we’ll let her tell you the full story. And we want to know what you’ve been up to too!” and Keith gives each of them an extra hug, which makes Pidge squeal and Hunk get a bit teary.)  
  
They all filter out of the room, until it’s just Coran, humming quietly as he does maintenance on the pod, and Lance, who stays close to Keith’s side, and Shiro, who’s smiling at Keith in that way that seems so familiar but so distant at the same time.  
  
( _wrong_ , his mind whispers.)  
  
“It’s good to have you back,” Shiro says.  
  
“It’s good to be back,” Keith replies, and he wants to hug Shiro again, but that feels—odd—so he just holds out his hand. Shiro shakes it, then says he’ll go help Allura carry the food to the lounge, and then it’s just Keith and Lance, and Coran, who, judging from the sudden cessation of his humming, is either eavesdropping or doing his best to blend into the background to give them privacy. Or both.  
  
Keith reaches out and takes Lance’s hand in his own.  
  
“I have to change,” he says, “and take a shower. Do you want to come?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“No shenanigans,” Keith adds, smirking, and snickers at Lance’s splutter. He thinks he hears Coran snicker too, though he might be mistaken. “I just want to be close to you.”  
  
Lance nods. “I gotta tell you some stuff anyway,” he says, then with a quick goodbye to Coran, they head out.  
  
“Okay so first of all,” Lance says, once the doors close behind them, “I was really worried about you and I’m really glad you’re okay and I love you. You still don’t have to respond to that last one, there’s no pressure. I just wanted to tell you again.”  
  
(Keith wants to reply, he does, he really truly does, but even with the knowledge that they are alone, and that Lance loves him back, he—can’t. He doesn’t know if it’s shyness, or awkwardness with words, or fear, or—what—but he can’t, and he frowns at himself, frustrated.)  
  
“Second,” Lance goes on, “you don’t have to worry about Lotor crashing our party in the lounge later cause I told him to stay away from us once you’re out of the healing pod.”  
  
Keith had forgotten Lotor was living in the castle ship. “And he listened?” he asks, surprised. “Just like that?”  
  
“Allura backed me up,” Lance says. “She said you’d just want to be around familiar faces.” He pauses. “I, uh, also may have told him that while pretending to clean my bayard. In sword form. While I was wearing grimy armor that had a bullet hole in it. So.”  
  
Keith snickers, then, “Wait, bullet hole? You said it wasn’t a big deal.”  
  
“It wasn’t,” Lance says. “I only had to spend an hour in the pod.”  
  
“An hour—” Keith begins, incredulous, but Lance interrupts him, though he squeezes Keith’s hand reassuringly.  
  
“Third of all,” he says, “Shiro’s been even weirder. When we were at Oriande he said he doesn’t feel like himself and that he can’t remember things. Right now you should focus on food and rest but we have to talk about this in more detail and like, compare notes or something. Cause this is freaking me out a bit.”  
  
“Yeah,” Keith says, “I—it’s hard to explain so I’ll tell you later, but something happened while I was captured and it made me realize this is probably worse than it seems.”  
  
They both stop in front of Keith’s door.  
  
“So from that totally not ominous note,” Lance says, “I’ll take you to another, less ominous but still terrifying to tell you about note, which is that Krolia is here.”  
  
Keith blinks at his door. “Here?”  
  
“No, not like”—Lance snorts—“Not like _here_ here, she’s not in your room. I meant she’s on the castle ship.” He hunches his shoulders, looking uncertain. “I know I shouldn’t have brought her here without talking to you first, but she showed up and I thought she had the right to know that you’re injured, and to stay here until you’re healed. But I told her that until I talk to you she shouldn’t come see you.” He pauses. “Is that okay? I’d understand if you’re mad.”  
  
Keith doesn’t know if he’s mad. He doesn’t know what he feels at all.  
  
“What do you mean, she showed up?” he asks finally.  
  
“She was at the Galra commander’s ship,” Lance says.  
  
Keith’s brow crinkles, then—  
  
“Oh,” he says, then, “ _Oh_.”  
  
(He doesn’t know how he’s gone from having no one come back for him to having multiple people come back for him, but it’s overwhelming, to the point where he doesn’t trust himself to speak.)  
  
“She showed up right when the commander came back and shot you in the shoulder,” Lance goes on. “She killed the commander afterward.”  
  
“Oh,” Keith says again.  
  
“She’s on the control deck,” Lance goes on. “After you’ve changed you can go talk to her if you want.”  
  
“I will,” Keith says, then, gesturing at his door, “Um, I know I said you could come in too, but I think I’d rather do everything alone.”  
  
Lance’s face falls. He lets go of Keith’s hand, but all he says is, “Okay.”  
  
“I’m not mad,” Keith adds hastily, because Lance should never look like that, like he feels shitty for having done something wrong. He puts his hands on either side of Lance’s face; Lance blinks, startled. “Okay? I’m not mad at you at all. Before this last mission I’d told her it’s okay if she comes here after quitting the blade. I just need to think on my own first if I’m going to go talk to her.”  
  
“Okay,” Lance says, “I’ll just go tell Red you’re healed in the meantime,” but he’s not smiling, so Keith leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth, then the other corner, then his chin—  
  
“ _Okay_ ,” Lance says again, smiling, and then he fucking _giggles_ , his ears turning red.  
  
Keith kisses the tip of his nose before letting go.  
  
“I’ll see you in the lounge,” he says, then goes into his room.

.^.  
  
(His clothes are not musty. They’re clean, and freshly washed, and as he tugs them on, as he transfers Lance’s love letter from the pocket of his blade suit to the pocket of his jacket, he thinks of the hallucination, and thinks of what the reality turned out to be, and he can’t believe he ever doubted this, even for a second.)

.^.  
  
He hadn’t paid much attention on the walk from the healing pod to his room, but as he goes to the control deck, Keith takes the time to look around. Objectively the castle ship hasn’t changed, but it still seems different. He doesn’t know if it’s because he hasn’t seen it in so long, or because he loves it more than ever after being away from it, but it seems better, homier, like a place he belongs instead of just a place he resides.  
  
He stops at the doors to the control deck and takes a deep breath to work through the weird mix in his gut. He’s nervous, and irritated, and—just a little—grateful—and he wants this to go well, wants himself to stay calm, to not ruin this—but also to not let himself forget, or to let her forget, because it will be a long time before the effect of her not coming back for him when he was little can be overshadowed by the effect of her coming back for him now.  
  
He sticks his hand in his pocket, grips Lance’s letter for strength, then marches through the doors and onto the control deck. Krolia is standing by the screen, swiping through a galaxy with her back towards him.  
  
“Where is that?” he asks.  
  
She whirls around, and for the briefest second her expression is something tense and apprehensive—but then her eyes land on Keith, see that he’s okay, and her whole face changes, so full of relief it’s staggering.  
  
“Keith,” she says, and it occurs to him, absurdly, that the only time he’s ever heard anyone’s voice sound like that is on TV, when the TV mom sees that her TV son is okay.  
  
Except it’s not quite the same, because somehow it’s—better—when it’s a real mama, and a real son, and a real feeling, and a real coming back for him.  
  
“Hi,” he says. He walks towards her, stops several steps away, and gestures to the screen. “Where is that?”  
  
“Farshta-12,” she says. “It’s where I grew up.”  
  
“It’s pretty,” he says, and he remembers another thing of hers that he once called pretty, and before he knows it it’s spilling out of his mouth. “I remember you.”  
  
Krolia’s brow furrows.  
  
“I—from when I was little,” he clarifies. “From before you left. I remember your—your marks.”  
  
Krolia touches the one on her left cheek and smiles, very slightly.  
  
“You always liked them,” she says, then, huffing a quiet laugh, “Once you offered to draw some on your father’s face so he would be as pretty as me.”  
  
He pictures it, though it’s like a movie more than a memory, pictures a chubby toddler holding a purple marker up to the younger version of his dad that he’s seen in photos, pictures a younger version of Krolia watching with a smile, or maybe a proper laugh, though he doesn’t know what that looks like—though it doesn’t matter for this purpose, he supposes, because he doesn’t know what any of this looks like, because he doesn’t remember this, doesn’t remember anything with his mama and his dad and himself all together.  
  
He feels sorry for that toddler, feels sorry for the kid who kept asking his dad where his mama has gone, feels sorry for the boy whose stuffed animal was taken away, feels sorry for the younger teenager who had no one. He feels sorry for all of them, for how lost and lonely they were, but he can’t say he feels sorry now.  
  
He has a family. He has Shiro, and Hunk, and Pidge, and Allura, and Coran, and Lance; he has two brothers and two sisters and an uncle and a boyfriend and whatever the heck the space mice and the lions are in this scenario; he has people who love him. And maybe one day he will have a mother again too, will include Krolia in this count of people, will call her mama instead of Krolia.  
  
Not now, but maybe one day.  
  
“Lance told me what you did,” he says, without preamble.  
  
She opens her mouth, closes it.  
  
“Thank you,” he says. “You didn’t have to come back.”  
  
“Of course I did,” she says, as if it’s ridiculous for him to think anything else. “You’re my son.”  
  
There is a silence. He remembers her trying to hug him, right before he had left for his mission, thinks of her seeing him get shot, of her killing the commander afterward, of watching him lie unconscious in the Red Lion, of respecting his space enough to wait here, on the control deck, rather than by the healing pod.  
  
He remembers her once holding him close, and him once making her laugh, and her leaving him anyway. But now she’s come back, and though he’ll probably have to wait until Lance is around to see her laugh, he can at least hold her close.  
  
So he takes a hesitant step in her direction, then another, then another, stilted and awkward as he moves, until he puts his arms around her waist.  
  
She stiffens, and he starts to pulls away, but then her arms settle around him, too, gently.  
  
“I thought I’d lost you again,” she whispers.  
  
He feels like he should say something, but he doesn’t know what, so he just tucks his head against her shoulder. It’s not as good a hug as the ones he gets from Shiro, or from Lance, but it’s—okay. It’s okay.  
  
They’ll be okay.  
  
After a few seconds Keith lets go of her. She lets go as well, though it’s clearly reluctant.  
  
“Everyone’s in the lounge,” he says. “If you want you can come.”  
  
Krolia agrees. She wipes the screen of the control deck blank, then follows him out of the room.

.^.  
  
Keith doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy.  
  
His stomach is full, and he’s sitting on one of the couches, tucked against Lance’s side. Lance’s arm is around his shoulder, and Keith can feel every time he laughs, feel every time he stretches or gestures to accompany his story or embellish a point.  
  
There’s a lot to talk about; it turns out he couldn’t reach the castle ship before his mission because it powered down while they were at Oriande, where Allura had apparently become some kind of lion goddess, though she blushes and protests when Lance hypes her up.  
  
(“She’s basically space Beyoncé now,” he explains.  
  
“Lance told me who that is,” Allura says to the room at large, “and I vehemently deny this. No one can be as good as Beyoncé.”  
  
“I’ve taught you well,” Lance says, pretending to wipe away a tear, “but don’t be ridiculous. No one is as good as Beyoncé, but you, Princess, are the only exception. The two of you plus Hunk are tied for number two in my heart.”  
  
“Bro,” Hunk says, clutching his heart, as Allura raises an eyebrow and repeats, “Number two?”  
  
“Of course,” Lance says, “Number one is garlic knots.”  
  
Keith pokes his side.  
  
“ _Ow_ ,” Lance says, then, “I mean, of course number one is Keith.”)  
  
Hunk and Pidge have plenty of diplomatic and technological updates, respectively, and Coran recalls about a dozen new and completely fabricated stories about life on Altea, and Shiro tells him about a recent independence celebration they all went to where Hunk almost accidentally got married to a local alien, and the space mice put on some kind of acrobatic show that Allura interprets, and Krolia—  
  
Well.  
  
(“We called Kolivan to tell him you’d been brought here and would probably not be returning to the blade,” Allura says, “but if you’d like you can call him yourself and confirm it.”  
  
“I’ll do it later,” Keith says.  
  
“I have to talk to him, too,” Krolia says, “though I think he already knows I’m not staying at the blade anymore, because I punched Doojan and Magha in the face.”  
  
Keith snorts. The others in the room look bewildered.  
  
“The blade members on the mission with me,” Keith explains.  
  
Everyone laughs. Lance cackles.  
  
“Amazing!” he says, holding up a hand.  
  
Krolia stares at it, then goes, “Oh, I remember this! Keith’s father taught me,” and leans over to high-five Lance’s palm.)  
  
After a couple of hours Keith starts to droop from so much socializing; he leans further and further into Lance’s side, until finally he gives up and scoots down so his head is in Lance’s lap. He closes his eyes, less so because he wants to and more so because he’s embarrassed to see anyone’s reaction, though he still hears Pidge’s voice falter in her explanation of her and Hunk’s disastrous experiment. She keeps going, though, and to his relief no one says anything.  
  
Lance’s hand slides into his hair, runs through it rhythmically, pushes it off his forehead and behind his ears. Between the soothing sensation and the murmur of voices in the room Keith starts to feel sleepy, until he feels himself drifting off.  
  
He wakes what feels like an hour later, to find the lounge dimly lit and quiet. Lance’s hand is still in Keith’s hair, and when Keith blinks blearily up at him he sees he’s holding a tablet in his free hand, scrolling through it.  
  
“Hi,” he croaks.  
  
Lance looks down at him and beams. “Hi, baby,” he says, and Keith realizes they must be alone. He puts down the tablet. “Did I wake you up?”  
  
“No,” Keith assures him. He then turns his head and sees that the lounge is indeed empty. “Where did everyone go?”  
  
“Most of them went to sleep,” Lance says. “But I think Pidge is still up working on a project.”  
  
“I’m sorry you had to sit here,” Keith says, contrite. “You should have woken me up and then you could sleep too.”  
  
“I’m okay,” Lance says. He runs his hand through Keith’s hair again. “I didn’t want to disturb you. And I’m too happy to be tired, anyway.”  
  
Keith looks up at him, at the hair curling over his neck, at the freckles visible even in the dim light, at the smile that warms him every time he sees it. He feels settled, and content, right down to the bottom of his soul.  
  
( _dude_ , says one part of his mind, deadpan. _that’s cheesy as fuck_.)  
  
He ignores it. Lance’s hand is still playing with his hair; Keith reaches up to catch his wrist.  
  
“I have to tell you something,” he says.  
  
Lance waits. Keith tugs at his wrist, bringing his hand in front of him. He traces letters along Lance’s palm, slow and deliberate so he won’t mistake what they are, then looks up at Lance again.  
  
Lance’s eyes are sparkling, crinkly at the edges from the sincerity of his smile.  
  
“I love you, too,” he says softly, then, his voice shaking slightly, “I’m really, really happy you’re back.”  
  
Keith lets go of Lance’s hand and sits up. He stays close, close enough that if he wanted to kiss Lance he’d only have to lean forward a fraction.  
  
“Are you okay with being back?” Lance asks next. “Are you happy?”  
  
Keith leans in, rests his forehead on Lance’s, and closes his eyes. He’s so happy he feels like he might burst, so happy it feels like it might spill out of him, like sunlight filtering through the cracks of a doorway, like a jar filled to overflowing. He knows there is a lot to come—he still has to tell Lance about Naxzela, and they still have to figure out what’s wrong with Shiro, and he still has to hear Krolia laugh properly, loud and delighted like she had in his memory, and there’s an entire fucking war going on around them.  
  
There’s a lot to come, but he’s made it this far. _They’ve_ made it this far, and along the way he’s gained friends, and family, and so much happiness he can barely breathe from the force of it.  
  
He opens his eyes and looks into Lance’s bright brown ones.  
  
“How could I not be happy?” he says, then smiles. “I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for not being too specific about the circumstances around krolia leaving. I don’t like to speculate too much in fics about stuff that’ll probably be explained in canon at some point
> 
> also sorry for any typos I’m so tired of looking at this lol if there’s anything big enough to be confusing please let me know and I’ll fix it
> 
> anyway thank you for reading! my twitter and tumblr are both @laallomri, feel free to come talk. this was the most difficult to write of my fics so far and there’s like 800 things I had to cut/rewrite so if you’re interested in seeing any of the alternate excerpts feel free to ask about those too
> 
> EDIT (28/05/2018): some people have been asking if there will be more to this series. since this is an s5 au and I've gone past oriande I'm marking this series as complete. I might do smaller fics set in this universe cause I like established relationship (those will probably just be on twitter or tumblr though) and depending on how s6 goes I might write more in this universe, but there are no promises so for now consider this au done


End file.
